


Drifting in the Foam

by ClammyHandsCayenne



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bloodbender Katara (Avatar), Bloodbending (Avatar), Drama & Romance, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Post-War, Romance, Self-Discovery, Sparring
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:14:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 36,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25909462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClammyHandsCayenne/pseuds/ClammyHandsCayenne
Summary: It's been two years since the Gaang ended the war, and Katara is struggling to find her place in the new world. She is haunted by the voices in her head and the firebender in her heart. She goes on a journey to heal herself as she and the Gaang help each other come to terms with the actions they took to survive the war. Told over the passing of the seasons.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar), Sokka/Suki (Avatar)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 23





	1. Fall

The leaves are changing in the fire nation. I mean this literally, but I guess it works in a figurative sense as well.

In the grand scheme of everything going on, this is not an important fact. There are many actual important facts that I could be thinking about, such as whatever negotiations are being discussed in the meeting I’m in; however, the leaves are changing, and I can’t stop staring out the window.   
For a girl born of ice and snow, trees with leaves of red and orange and gold were unforgettable, and therein lies the problem.  
  
It would’ve been about two years ago now that I first saw saffron-colored leaves. Of course, that was also the first time I saw a treehouse in the sky and a boy who didn’t look at me like a matriarch. We held hands (his hands were always so purposeful, so sure; years of sword fighting will do that, I guess). We kissed (his lips were much like his hands although I’d rather not think about the why). We swapped secrets ( _I’ve never seen leaves this color before_ ; _Well, I’ve seen too much red altogether_ ).

I felt an ache I couldn’t place when he said this. It was an ache he was all too familiar with because we were looking at each other in the same way. ( _You’re angry at them, too_ ). He said this with an easy confidence, but he was bluffing.

It wasn’t anger; it was homesickness.

( _Polar lights have some red in them, too_ ). He didn’t say anything at that because after all, light shows didn’t matter much to a freedom fighter, but he held my hand like they did.

This was the first time I had left home, so it was the first time I had ever felt homesick, and I didn’t know what to do with it.

  
After we won, I realized home started to mean too many things at once, and the ache got deeper. One of the things I learned from the war was that home is something you shouldn’t think about until you’re certain you’ll make it back. (Jet taught me this, although I could never figure out what he considered home to be).

  
I didn’t know if I would make it home for a long time, so I didn’t think about it. When I finally did, I realized I didn’t know what I considered home to be, either.

It seemed right, at first, to go back to the South Pole and rebuild, but really, it just kept my mind off the fact it hadn’t felt like home to me for a while. I would contribute this feeling to the war, to travelling, to carving out a family for myself across the nations, but if I was being honest, it stopped being home for me the day it snowed black ash.

None of us were really the same after that. (Being the last waterbender of the Southern Water Tribe didn’t matter much to the people of the South. They wanted their husbands and sons back. You couldn’t blame a little girl for being born a bender, but it was easy enough to put a name and a face to the reason why their families were broken).

War crimes come in all shapes and sizes. (Jet taught me that, too)

Besides, the rebuilding of the South was almost done at this point. Pakku had opened a bending school so he could stay with Gran-Gran. The duty I felt towards my people was considered fulfilled. (I ended the war, so the men came home. I was responsible for the destruction, so I rebuilt our village from the ground up).

I could choose my duty now. I thought when it was all over, I’d know exactly where I was meant to be. All I know is that I’m filled with more questions than answers.

_Why was I so restless when I finally got what I wanted? Didn’t I want peace? So why couldn’t I just enjoy it? If a waterbender feels so uncomfortable in her birth element, where is her place in the world? Could it be with Aang? Seeking new adventures with the Avatar? Could my place be like Toph’s? Should I help teach a new generation of benders the things I had learned? Could it be something like Suki had? Should I fluctuate between all the different nations that carried a piece of my heart?_

The problem was, I didn’t feel like flying around anymore. I wanted solid ground and a tangible firmament.

The problem was, I learned things in the war that should never be taught. There were many lessons that needed to die with me.

The problem was, there was one nation that carried the biggest piece of my heart. I think of black hair and gold eyes and clamp down on the thought before it can take over.

Where was home? Maybe the simple answer was that I just didn’t have one.

  
I sighed. Another thing the war taught me was that there are just some questions that shouldn’t be asked. (You don’t want to know the answers).

I had never been able to relate to Jet before, but here I was, a confused 16 year old with a perspective on the world that’s getting increasingly more bitter. Maybe that’s why I’m thinking about him now. If he were here, I’d ask him what he did to deal with his cynicism, but obviously that’s not an option. I winced.  
I went back to staring at the leaves.  
Some of them had begun to fall, and that felt like an omen.  
  
I tear my gaze away from the window and try to refocus on the meeting. We’ve been at peace-building for over a year now, and I alternate between overwhelming joy and crippling unease. Joy at what’s been accomplished; I count the victories in my head like a checklist ( _we won the war, we brought balance, we saved lives, we are mending the nations, we are helping people_ ). The unease, however, has a list, too ( _a dictator always has supporters, we have to maintain the balance, we have to stop elemental bias, we have to help people who don’t want it, people who hate us_ ).  
  
That’s not even mentioning the biggest source of my disquiet ; one other list I have tried very hard to ignore for the past year; a list I have tried in vain to lock away because it comes with names. I don’t have to count these items; their voices scream the tally at me: mom, Jet, Zuko, Azula. ( _Didn’t you have a hand in what happened to us? Aren’t there nameless others that fell to your will and you didn’t bother to heal them? So much for never turning your back on people. You hurt people, Katara, you got people killed too didn’t you? You ruined and marred and controlled them didn’t you? Bloodbender, killer, murderer, Hama..)_  
  
A loud laugh snaps me back to reality, and I find my hands gripping the table edge. I realize that I had accidentally frozen the cups of water in front of myself and the two nobles I’m seated between. I relax my hands and let the water unfreeze, taking a cursory glance around to make sure no one noticed.  
  
That was a mistake.  
  
I make eye contact with none other than our new Firelord. He has his head inclined to the diplomat beside him but is watching me with an unreadable expression. I suppress a sigh. I had made it a point to avoid him this visit. ( _Especially after last time_ ). Sokka and I came to give updates on the progress of the South, and our negotiations at this meeting were in regards to supplies needed for the upcoming winter. It’s something Sokka wanted to take the lead on since he was working to take over as chief, so I had successfully managed to ignore the Firelord.

Well, up until now, seeing as he was still staring at me. I deadpan at him and look away.

  
The meeting was pretty much over at this point. Most people had tapered off in their own conversations. I would normally sit next to Aang on these visits, but he wasn’t here this time. He had been on the move since the war ended. ( _Nomads don’t have a permanent home_ ; he told me when I asked. His duty was to travel. I guess when you can fly from place to place, home is everywhere and nowhere all at once. It didn’t help answer any of my questions).  
  
I looked out the window again. The ache fluttered in time with the leaves drifting out of sight.  
  
Finally, I heard a chair scrape back, and the Firelord stood up to officially adjourn the meeting. He was speaking to its success, to how far we’ve come, to how far we had to go before harmony was achieved, and to the generous nobles who journeyed a ways to be here (which I guess, technically, included me).  
  
 _Zuko_. I almost winced at allowing myself to think it. One word, two syllables, so many implications. Zuko: foe to friend to Firelord to...something more, something that always ended in a giant question mark whenever I tried to quantify it. I heard more chairs scraping, and I spared a look at Sokka, who raised his eyebrows. I nodded a goodbye at him and got up to leave.  
I forced my steps to remain steady and normal, but I felt like sprinting. When I made it back to my room, I inhaled sharply, pulled water from the vase on my nightstand and bent it into ice daggers that I threw at the wall with a lethal force. I exhaled.  
  
I walked over to my window. The leaves don’t remind me of the poles anymore. ( _I’ve seen too much red altogether)._ Maybe you were right, Jet.

I wasn’t alone for very long before the knock came. The skin on the back of my neck prickled, and I knew who it was before I opened the door. It always happened when he was nearby, and I wondered on occasion if it was a result of him saving me and me saving him, or a byproduct of being struck by lightning (he always seemed to hold an electric charge that I thought would shock me when I stood too close). Maybe it was just because ever since he crashed into the South Pole, I’ve been attuned to the whereabouts of his person. It was for safety purposes at first but morphed quickly into very different reasons I didn’t dare name.  
  
I open the door, and he stands looking every inch of fire nation royalty. I thought of the leaves again. (Red robes, orange fire, gold eyes; haven’t I watched him change in much the same way? _He fell like the leaves, too, didn’t he? Curled and burnt and seizing and wasn’t it your fault?)_ I grimace.

He has that unreadable expression on his face again, which was frustrating.  
  
I standby to let him in, which he does with a very purposeful stride. After closing the door, I give myself a moment to gather strength before I turn to face him. (His unreadable expression usually precedes his temper.) He crosses his arms and furrows his brow. Not good.  
  
“It’s gotten worse, hasn’t it?” He asks by way of greeting. I sigh and mirror his body language in a feeble attempt to look formidable.

  
“Nothing has gotten worse. I’m fine.” I force myself not to cringe as I watch his eyes squint and jaw twitch. Oops.

  
“Don’t do that. Don’t act like things are normal when they’re not.” He says, taking a step closer to me. I give him a mirthless chuckle and lean back against my door.

  
“Why not? I learned it from you.” It comes out without much thought, but I don’t backtrack. I said it softly, but that did nothing stop the bite the words contained. The bite I intended.  
I could’ve said worse.

  
“Katara,” he almost sounds pained. He looks at me searchingly, like he was trying to read my mind. (I’m not entirely convinced he can’t). I could almost see him bite his cheek to keep from saying things Firelords shouldn’t.  
“You don’t have to do that with me. Pretend, I mean,” he settles for this at last.

  
I almost laughed out loud.

 _Who are you to talk to me about pretending?_ I nearly hiss but stop myself. (Remember what you learned about questions).  
  
“Who’s pretending?” I say, channeling Sokka and trying to remain nonchalant, but the ache throbbed.

  
He looks like he's in pain again, and he watches me for a bit too long before speaking.

  
“There were things I was trying to protect you from, you know? Things I didn’t want you to see. Not you, of all people.”  
I almost fell over. He was breaking the rules. He was getting too personal, which made me soft. He was saying things that a leader of a nation cannot afford, and it would cost him.

I throw my hands up and give him the most scathing look I could muster.  
“That’s the problem, Zuko! I can’t do that. You see me. You always have. I can’t hide things from you. If I had known the idea was to hold things back, I would’ve protected you from stuff, too, but I didn’t know that’s what we were doing. Can’t you see how unfair that is?” I felt like crying at the truth of it. He was trained from childhood to temper his emotions, but I wasn’t so subtle. They came out of me in words and looks and bending, and he knew that better than anyone. ( _He saw you, little puppetmaster,_ a gravelly voice I recognized as Hama whispers in my mind, _he knows what you can do, bloodbender, yet you blame him for hiding things?_ )

  
Everything was hurting now. The ache was permeating from my gut to every hollow I had. (And after the war, I had too many).

We were looking at each other in the same way. ( _Red leaves look a lot like polar lights_ ). My hand twitched. I pressed my palms together and turned away from him before I did something stupid like hold his hand.

The silence was deafening. He turned to face the window, and I nearly thought he was going to turn around and leave.  
He eventually found his words.  
“You said you’d tell me if things got worse.” He said at last. He ignored my question, but I shouldn’t be surprised. We learned many of the same lessons after all.

“Do you think I didn’t notice the frozen water in that meeting? Or that?” He gestures to the daggers impaling the wall, dripping onto the floor at this point. I flinch. His eyes soften.  
“I can help you. I did it before.” He says this gently, taking a few steps towards me. 

( _Need some help with that?_ A voice resounds in my mind, low, and sultry, attached to images of pale hands in his hair, pale lips on his own, pale fingers touching the scar on his chest _I_ healed; the scar he took for _me_ ).

“Katara, he tries again, "there was a time when you would talk to me about it.”

My spine tenses rigidly. I force myself to stand tall, retreating from his minimal advancements. This conversation had the potential to clobber me. I refuse to lose.

I must get into the warrior’s mindset, and warriors don’t bare their hearts unless they’ve been ripped from their chest. ( _Bloodbender,_ Hama says, _you don’t have a heart, you ripped it out yourself, stupid girl_ ).  
  
“Zuko, I kinda think that time has passed, don’t you?” I look at him again, nearly losing my resolve at the frustration he was emitting in waves. We have managed to hurt each other more as allies than we ever did as enemies. This type of hurt was worse than water whips or burns.

I sigh again, a habit I felt developing.

  
“I’m leaving tomorrow morning.” I continued.  
  
“I see.” he says, sounding defeated. The ache stomped its feet. ( _You left me, too, you know,_ a deeper voice that sounds like Jet speaks now). I rub my temples a little, trying in vain to squash the voices.   
  
“Yes,” I said, and because I was determined to win as many wars as possible, and because I was in pain, and because the voices in my head were egging me on, I struck with my words as viciously as I struck with my ice daggers, “I don’t know when I’ll be back.”  
  
His expression was unreadable again. With his shoulders back and head high, he began to fortify himself, standing straighter and taller, and I recognized the posture as one he would take before a fight. I tried my best to mirror it, but I could feel my cracks; my lip was trembling, my nose was twitching, my fingers were fiddling with the hem of my robes.

He was unwavering, and because he always was my greatest adversary, never holding back, he met me blow for blow. In a clipped voice, the Firelord once again, he said,  
“The fire nation will always welcome the water tribe with open arms,” and just like the leaves that blow by my window, he was gone.  
  
I didn’t cry. (I only let myself cry when I bathed now because then, at least, my tears mingled with the water, and I couldn’t tell them apart). Instead, I bent the daggers into very familiar stilettos, frowning a little at my melodrama, and threw them at the ceiling this time. I would have to clean the mess up later. I sigh again. I’ve become good at making messes. I stalked back over to my window and thought about the last mess I made.

* * *

The last time Sokka and I had been in the fire nation was several months ago. The summer was in its full-fledged, blazing glory. The sun was unforgiving, and the air was hot and sticky and strangely electrifying. (Maybe it was me who held the charge. Maybe I was the one who could shock).

Sokka and I were splitting the negotiations; he was asking for resources to update water tribe ships and I was asking for modern medicines to aid our healers.  
Dad had been in the North Pole for the last few months, getting acquainted with Chief Arnook and bartering for different things. They were also exchanging details about the way each of them ruled their tribes. (It had been too long since the sister tribes came together. Dad said in a letter their discussions could get heated, but they both wanted to learn).  
  
Me and my brother took over as spokesmen for our tribe almost as soon as the war ended.  
We were expecting bias for our age, dealing with the same condescension as Zuko and Toph and Suki, but we were not prepared for the bias for our nationality.

Many nobles still viewed Sokka and I as peasants.

  
The meetings we attended when we came as diplomats were usually hit or miss. Our opinions on new policies and the votes we gave to move forward were either revered by those who respected our aid in the war, or scorned by those who believed we shouldn’t be allowed in the council meetings at all.

  
This summer, however, exactly one year after the war ended, the meetings were atrocious.

The humid air seemed to seep under everyone’s skin and make us all tense and heady. Council meetings felt pressurized, like a tornado was brewing with the potential to rip us all apart at any moment.  
There was going to be a party at the end of everyone’s stay; a celebration to encourage international cooperation and ring in a new era of peace.  
(We had made it a year.)

  
It was a good thought, but it attracted every degree of Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom nobles.

Many of the more powerful ones attended meetings, despite their indifference towards politics and their own people.

Zuko couldn’t stand them, but he also couldn’t deny their entrance; many funded the palace coffers, which funded peace reforms.  
Iroh traveled from Ba Sing Se to attend these summer meetings and did his best to temper the more cantankerous nobles present. (He wanted to charm them into docility).  
Despite his best efforts, Sokka and I were subjected to a variety of calculated backhanded compliments and degrading questions about our culture for the duration of our stay.

By the end of the week, we both felt deadly.  
  
The final meeting we had was in the afternoon, right after lunch. Some of the more aggressive noblemen had been drinking heavily and were now in various stages of drunkenness. Racist nobles drinking in the heart of the fire nation summer was a bad combination.

The meeting started the same way as all the others.

" _Oh, you mean you only have wood and canvas for your ships? How quaint."_  
" _Aren’t your people healers? What do you need medical supplies for?"_  
" _Is it true your people eat their meals in one giant hut together?"_

  
It went on and on. Sokka and I did our best to field the questions with grace. Iroh and Zuko helped as much as they could, praising us and our culture, but it was mostly futile.

  
It wasn’t until I brought up the possibility of an educational program for the water tribe children that the tension peaked. I was discussing the South’s financial situation with councilmen from the fire nation and asking for benders from the Earth Kingdom to help with furnishings when one particularly drunk nobleman, decided to speak up.  
  
“A school? I thought all the southerners were still hunting and gathering? Do you need a school to teach that?” By the grace of Tui and La, I managed to tame my answer into something level.  
“Well, considering our village was decimated and abandoned to fend for itself, education was left to the children’s parents. There’s actually _time_ to teach now that it’s thriving. We have a building ready, but we need some teachers.” I looked at Zuko, who was looking at me with pride and something else that made me blush.  
The nobleman laughed out loud, bouncing in his chair.

“Well, little waterbender, I can only imagine what you were taught growing up. I would recommend a fire nation curriculum so those kids can get a proper education.” He and a few other nobles giggled to themselves.  
I couldn’t help myself.  
“Yes, well, we’ve all heard the rumors of what they taught in your fire nation schools. I think we have different definitions of ‘proper’.”

He glared at me, red-faced now.  
“Yeah, we’ve all heard the rumors about you, too, waterbender.” Silence fell over the room. I blinked rapidly and thought for a wild moment about the Firelord sitting halfway down the table. I forced myself not to look at him. I narrowed my eyes, planting my hands flat on the table. He was challenging me at a game I was unfamiliar with, but I knew I couldn't back down. I swallowed hard and spoke with a coldness I hardly recognized.  
“And what might those be?” My breath could be seen in puffs of cold air. The temperature around me had dropped several degrees, and I was only vaguely aware of the glasses of water sloshing around in tandem with the anger warring inside of me.

  
The worst was yet to come.

  
I saw Iroh open his mouth to intervene, but he was cut off.  
“That your own people don’t even want you anymore. That they blame you, waterbender, for sending all your men away. You stopped a war and they still don’t want you. You’re here asking for supplies for them, and they couldn’t care less.” He practically spat the words at me.  
  
Every glass in the room shattered with a sickening crack of flying ice.  
I jumped up from my seat, waterskin open. I heard voices overlap in the room.

Sokka, Suki, Aang, Toph, and Zuko had jumped up as well, all yelling different things at the man at the same time.  
We were each in our various defensive stances, and the nobleman reared back, looking terrified. It wasn’t just him, either.

Nearly everyone at the table had jumped back in their chairs and were watching us with a mixture of fear and unease.  
  
The six of us looked between each other then and realized what they were seeing: the teenagers who ended the war, faced down a Firelord, fire princess and fire army were all threatening one inebriated man for a drunken slur. (The Gaang, it seemed, had not yet grown into politics). Taking in their terrified faces, we all burned a little with shame.

We sat down with a deliberate slowness.  
  
Zuko cleared his throat, choosing to ignore our collective outburst entirely, and told the man Sokka and I were vital to the success of the fire nation’s peace offerings, and that without me, he would be serving Azula, and _did that sound better to him? no, didn’t think so_ , and that if he ever spoke to me or another diplomat in such a personal and petty manner, he would be escorted from the palace and would not be allowed to attend meetings. He told the man he was to apologize to me, and despite the alcohol, the man had enough sense to still look fearful and mumble an apology.  
  
The meeting was effectively over after that.  
The festivities were held that evening, which was a bit of a shame because no one was in the mood to celebrate.  
  
We all ignored each other at the party, but I wasn’t sure if it was because we didn’t want to talk about what happened or because the nobles still watched us warily. Sokka tried to pull me aside after the meeting, but I wouldn’t let him. He would try to tell me the rumors weren’t true, and I wasn’t in the mood to pretend to believe him.  
We all grabbed drinks and took off to different corners of the room. I imagine our head-space was the same, though.

(You can’t live and fight and rage with people without being able to read their minds a little).

  
I took to a wall facing the front of the room and stayed there for most of the night. I watched people dance, but mostly I watched the Firelord mingle, feeling my neck tingle every so often when he would look at me.

  
When the party started to wind down and I couldn’t find any of my friends, I decided to leave the large ballroom. I wasn’t ready for bed, so I made my way to a side door where  
I ran into Aang. He was leaning against the doorframe, hanging half inside and half outside, and it reminded me of something. What was it they said about the Avatar? He was the bridge between the worlds? I wondered if he would he always be half in and half out.

I greeted him and was surprised to see he was holding an empty wine glass. He smiled at my greeting, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He didn’t drink very often, but when he did, it tended to make him just a little too pensive.  
“Are you enjoying the party?” I asked, wanting to pull him out of whatever thoughts were making him look at me like that.  
“Sure,” he supplied but said nothing else. He was staring into the night with an intensity that made me think he was seeing things I could not. It was a piercing gaze he would get when approaching spirits, and his gentleness would turn into the authority that I often forgot he possessed, giving him a solemn expression similar to the one he had now. It was a look that told me he was watching something through the lens of hundreds of eyes, hundreds of lives. When he got that look, I found it was best to let him think.

  
“Well, good,” I offered lamely, “I was gonna get some air.” I gestured awkwardly to the door. He nodded, gave me a fractionally more sincere smile, and stepped out of the way.  
I walked past him, giving his arm a gentle squeeze as I went through the door.

I stopped when I heard his voice.

  
“Do you think I’ve been a good Avatar?” I whirled around, looking at him with wide eyes.

  
“Aang, you’ve been a great Avatar. Why would you even ask me that?” I tried to read his expression, but it was tightly controlled. He turned away from me, looking back inside like he heard someone call his name.

  
“I don’t know, Katara,” he turned back towards me for a moment, “sometimes I think the spirits are too trusting.” With a sad smile, he walked back inside.  
  
The entire exchange made the ache flare up again. I felt his words crawl to the pit of my stomach and weigh me down with some important meaning I couldn’t quite grasp.

I shook my head a little and started walking.  
Before I knew it, I found myself in a courtyard. I gasped a little.  
No, not _a_ courtyard.  
 _The_ courtyard.

  
I watched Zuko nearly die for me in this place a year ago. I wanted to kick myself for stumbling back here, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I wish I could remember that thing Zuko always said about destiny. It felt appropriate in this moment.  
I walked to the middle of it. I always thought I was lucky to have oceans at my disposal. Having an endless supply of water was an advantage over fire. I was never one that believed any element was better than another, but watching the fire siblings blast flames out of their bodies the size of tidal waves made me jealous for the first time.

The blazing heat from red meeting blue made me feel closer to the sun than any flight on Appa ever did.

  
I walked to the far end of the courtyard.  
( _Zuzu, you don’t look so good_ ). I heard her voice rattle around in my mind as I stood at the spot his body lay twitching and failing.

  
I continued on towards the pillars.  
( _There you are, filthy peasant_ ).  
I sat down in front the grated storm drain.  
I could hear the manic sobbing in my mind and wondered for a moment about Azula and her blue fire.

If I were a firebender, could my fire have been blue?   
I pulled water from the storm drain, tossed it in the air and froze it midflight. It flashed in the starlight and shattered when it hit the ground.  
It reminded me of lightning.

  
I sighed. I always thought if I came back here I would feel some sort of closure, but I just felt small.  
And then my neck tingled.  
I looked up and saw him leaning against a pillar at the opposite end of the courtyard, too far away for me to read his face.  
He made his way over, watching me with some kind of scrutiny. He hesitated for just a moment before sitting down next to me. He didn’t say anything, but I could feel him fidget like he wanted to, so I turned to him with my eyebrows raised.  
“What are you doing out here?” He asked gently. There was no judgment, only curiosity. I appraised him a moment, hair in a top knot, clothes made of red and gold thread, and eyes like the honey I only ever got to eat when I came to the palace. I gave a little sigh.  
“I just wanted-“ I stopped short. I just wanted what? What did I want?

I just wanted to leave the party? I just wanted to get some fresh air? No, those weren’t right.

I just wanted to see this place again? I just wanted to face down where you almost died for me? I just wanted to see the center stage of my worst nightmares and prove I was still brave?  
Closer to the truth but still not quite accurate.

( _It’s about me, isn’t it, peasant?_ Azula offers my brain. _You feel...oh that’s hilarious! Are you guilty for what happened? You really are pathetic. You want to absolve yourself. Waterbenders can’t even accept victory in the right way. Or maybe that’s just you_.)

I shook my head in a vain attempt to shut her up.

  
“You just wanted..?” Zuko prompts. I looked at him again. How did I tell him what I really wanted was to forget that he took lightning for me? Because every time I thought about it, I tingled and crackled and felt like I could shoot across the sky myself. How could I tell him I wanted to forget the sounds of his sister sobbing, to stop hearing her voice in my head, taunting me? How could I tell him that ever since I defeated her, I wanted to ask about her well-being-where she was, if someone was helping her, if he ever saw her? How could I tell him that I wanted to know if he thought I could have turned out like her if I had been raised by someone like Hama? 

Short answer: I couldn’t.

  
I didn’t have the words. I wanted too many things, and they all vied for my attention, and if I tried to pin them down, I think they would rush out me, directionless. It wasn’t about want anymore. It was about need. And what I _needed_ was to learn how to pile my mess up in my arms and just keep it to myself.

  
“Katara?” His eyebrows were drawn together, and he looked nervous. It was because of that, I almost considered letting my mess spill out in a big, dirty heap. Because he had a way of making us feel alike. And because he looked so sincere. And because there was something else simmering underneath- something that was always there, burning, waiting to boil over.

But I had been scorched by him before, and I wouldn’t be able to handle it twice.

“I just wanted to say thank you for what you said in the meeting earlier.”

He didn’t look happy at my answer. He looked like he wanted to say more, and if he really wanted to know, I feel like he could very easily pluck it out of my brain. As many ice walls as I was used to building by now, I could never get cold enough around him. If he were to ask, I would spill my guts, which is why I was thankful he wouldn’t. He would leave it at my non-answer, knowing it was a lie, and he would let it go.

Maybe it was cowardly of me, but I was rapidly trying to self-preserve, and it wasn’t going well. I used to be much better at it. I really should get a grip. (Maybe I’m the one boiling over.)

  
“Was he right?” he asked me. He wasn’t looking at me anymore, and it took me a minute to realize he was talking about the noble. It was painfully blunt, but Zuko knew better than most what it was like to be the outcast.  
“In a manner of speaking.”  
“So why don’t you leave?”  
“It’s not that easy.”  
“Because it’s your home?” The ache flared. I met his eyes, conveying words I couldn’t say and he nodded, understanding in only the way he could.

  
“But you won’t go anywhere else?” he asked in a carefully controlled tone. 

  
“I don’t know, Zuko. Where would I go?” This time he met my eyes, and it was my turn to understand.

Images flooded my mind of where the two of us were, exactly one year ago, after saving each other in this very courtyard.

( _My hands drifted over his chest, healing his wounds and bringing him back from death; pale arms pulling me closer, murmuring things I had to strain to hear.)_

( _Do you remember all the things you told me?_ I wonder).

  
“It’s not so easy to leave a place that’s familiar,” I said, and mumbled as an afterthought “or people that are familiar.”

  
“You left me, you know. And we were...” he paused, floundering for the right word.

( _My fingers grazed the scar on his face as I whispered stories of water tribe lore on nights he tossed and turned and twitched and trembled. He told me one thing he learned from the war was that sometimes it’s better to stay awake; he said he gets a feeling in his gut as cold as arctic water when a nightmare is coming._

 _(Don’t you remember when you told me that feeling went away the longer I was with you? Don’t you remember the way we slept so much more soundly when we were together? Or is just me who can’t sleep anymore?_ I wonder) _._

  
“Familiar?” I suggested for him, somewhat sarcastically, when he trailed off.

  
“Connected," he says firmly. "Weren’t we?” My chest hurt. He was looking at me in earnest, and it made me feel vulnerable and even smaller. All I could give was a small nod.

“And now?” he asked, and I looked away, face burning and gut aching. I wanted to scream at him for asking this question.

How could he not know? My brain buzzed.

( _Didn’t you feel all the things I couldn’t say out loud in the way I touched you, healed you? They were so important, those wordless confessions of mine, couldn’t you tell? You read me so well, too well, so how don’t you know_?)

I wonder, I wonder, I wonder.

These questions have burned at me for over a year. (Remember, some questions shouldn’t be asked).

  
“It’s hard to be connected half a world away.” He didn’t look at me when I said it, but I saw him nod to himself. We said nothing else.

He eventually got up, mumbled something about making sure all the guests had left, and then he was gone.

He didn’t look back at me once.

As soon as he was out of sight, I shot up, pulled all the water I could from the storm drain and froze myself in it.

If this courtyard had a memory, I think it would shudder at the mimicry I created. (Ice like lightning, clothes dripping water like tears, brunette girl speaking hateful words and giving the same dark-haired boy chest pain, albeit of a different variety).

I breathed through my nose and dropped to the ground, letting the water rush outwards in freezing waves.

It soaked the courtyard in the same way fire might blacken the earth, but it wasn't nearly as satisfying.

I felt jealous of firebenders for the second time that night.

* * *

  
My reverie was interrupted yet again by loud knocking. A servant had come to tell me dinner was being served.   
I hid in my room and nursed the ache in my gut instead. 

Morning came without much fanfare. It was sunrise, much too early for nobles to send us off, which we preferred.

Suki was coming with us back to the South, saying her warriors would be fine for a season and that she wanted to add surviving a South Pole winter to the notch in her ferocious warrior belt. (What she really meant was that she missed my brother).  
  
The three of us waited on the docks, and I listened to Sokka regale Suki with the wonders of seal jerky and sea prunes, but it somehow turned into hushed whispers about the cold nights and how to keep warm, which I promptly tuned out with a mental note to attempt healing the emotional trauma later from the image Sokka conjured.

  
It was just about time for us to board when I felt my neck tingle.  
I found him immediately. ( _Bloodbender_ , Hama taunted, _warriors aren’t pulled towards their opponents like magnets. They don’t look at adversaries like compasses pointing north_ ).  
  
He gave his goodbyes to Sokka and Suki before turning to face me.

  
We stood about six feet apart. I tried to remain stoic (warrior, warrior, warrior), but no matter how big I tried to make myself, I still felt small and contrite. ( _Weak_ , Hama spat.)  
  
But then he smiled at me. And _that_ was a problem. A proper smile from Zuko, which was one that was genuine and a little shy, was enough for me to lay my weapons down and forfeit.  
I crossed the space between us and before I could even speak, he gathered me into his arms, crushing me in a hug. I froze for a moment, and I felt him hold his breath, but his hug worked better than words ever could. I relaxed and looped my arms around his neck, hugging him back just as fiercely. He made a low noise in his throat.

  
“Write to me.” He whispers.  
“About what?” I ask.  
“About anything you want-the South Pole, the rebuilding, your family...Sokka’s attempts to convince Pakku to build a sound proof dome for him and Suki,” which made me chuckle and gag at that same time.

He pulls back, arms still around my waist and smiles at me again. (So genuine, so shy, a little wistful; _serious_ problem).

And like an after thought, he added, “or about you and me.”  
I give him a look.  
“Do you think that’s the best idea?”  
He gives _me_ a look.  
“It’s the only one I have left,” which hurt more than it should have. I cup his cheek and brush my thumb lightly at the bottom of his scar, making him breathe out a little sigh.

I give him a small nod. With one last smile, I board the ship.   
  
  
When we pull away from the harbor, I look between Zuko and the trees. The farther we got, the more their colors blended into one- _a forest of Firelords_ , I muse.  
The ache came back tenfold.  
I want to water whip myself. Don't I bend the element of change? Why am i dealing with it so badly?

( _Because you're a peasant_ , Azula offered).

( _Because you're weak_ , Hama hissed).

( _Because you're always leaving people_ , Jet chimed in). 

I grip the ship railing tightly and shut my eyes. I try to take deep breaths, something Zuko always did before heavy meetings.

I open my eyes and realize I formed miniature glaciers following the ship’s wake.

Hama’s cold cackle sounded somewhere in the back of my mind. I sighed.

It was going to be a long winter.


	2. Winter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this household, we respect Suki as a warrior and as a girl and as a baddie.  
> It's a long one, boys.

Winter in the South was brutal.

I reveled in the snow and slush, but I could feel myself becoming as hard as the ice I rendered.  
  
Days were long and only the strongest of the benders dared to venture out. Snow came down blindingly, and we used rope to keep track of each other in the low visibility. Not even master waterbenders can survive getting lost in this kind of weather. We worked fast in the first months, fortifying the houses for the incoming blizzards and ensuring our newer infrastructures would survive the violent winds. It was grueling work, but I made sure to go out every chance I could.

Sokka thought I was crazy, but the harder I worked, the easier it was to ignore the voices.  
  
After the first couple of months, the snowstorms came in their full force, pushing us indoors most days. Part of the redesign included expanding our community housing, so many families now stayed in apartment-like complexes, a concept Pakku suggested early in the rebuilding process based on Northern techniques. This technique meant that Sokka, dad, and I each had our own small house. I was a little incredulous at the privacy that the design allowed, having community mean so much to us all, but after the war, it seemed the need for a little retreat to reflect in solitary was recognized. (Also, we weren't kids anymore.)

Pakku insisted on constructing our family's houses himself, but I think he really just wanted to build a place for him and Gran.

(He was finally living the life he imagined for the two of them).

Each of our houses more or less consisted of a bedroom, small front room, kitchen, and bathroom, and they were connected to each other in a delicate design of branching walkways, which were insulated with arching ice sculpted to keep the heat in. The walkways conjoined at our front doors (mine was bender access only) so we could reach each other easily. 

For the first time in my life, I lived alone.  
Pakku constructed the basics of my place- walls, ceilings, and floors, but I added the personality.

My room became something like a temple for me. It was practical, but beautiful. It held things that were well-known; furs and bone furniture and endless hues of blue, but it also held things that from my newer adventures; a bison whistle from Aang, a meteorite sculpture from Toph, and history scrolls from the fire nation (I wanted to learn what they taught in schools, which I regretted almost immediately).

My favorite part, however, were the designs I bent onto the walls.

  
I was tired of staring at the plain ice and some nights, i got the eerie sensation that the more I looked at the smooth blue walls, the more I felt something start to look back. I could blame this feeling on the campfire stories because they were fairly popular in the winter time, but I decided to bend a distraction nonetheless. 

I originally intended to keep the designs simplistic, but they took on a life of their own.

I started with the Water Tribe symbol, adding flowers around it for a bit of flair, which ended up turning into nomad flower crowns.

I added waves crashing to sandy shores.

I added the moon and the sun.

I added trees (and a treehouse if you tilted your head a certain way).

I added sky bison and flying boars and turtle ducks. I added a veiled lady and an Unagi and two koi fish circling each other.

I added dragons and badger moles and two figures divided by a mountain.

I added crystals from two very different caves.

I added symbols for wisdom, bravery, and trust.

I added arrows and boomerangs and a rock tent and deadly fans.

I added swords and pai sho tiles and a tea set and after a little thought, I added a lightning bolt.

Above all, I added flames.

I couldn’t help myself. I added them around any empty space I could.

(They are endless, and I touch and reshape them too many times to count).  
It was the wallpaper of my soul.  
It was the fabric of my life.  
When I was feeling lonely in my southern world, I brushed over the figures I created. (I had found friends in ice before, hadn’t I?)

We were going on a solid month straight of staying indoors, and my icicle friends help me feel grounded. (My head has been so far away lately; I think it blew away with the leaves that I left behind). Seasons didn’t mean much in the poles and all my travelling had me missing things that would never survive the ice. Summer breezes and moonpeach trees and warm rain and warmer firebenders.

( _Pathetic_ , Azula scoffs in her haughty lilt.) I groan. The fire princess has been very vocal all winter. I had been hearing her the most. I wonder if the harshness of the weather brings her out.

Or maybe it’s just the harshness in me.

( _Pathetic emotions for a pathetic bender_ , she amends).

I defeated you, didn’t I? And then I groan again. I was now trying to argue with a voice in my own head. I had wondered once if I could have turned into Azula had my family valued my power over my person.

Her insanity was born and nursed by a loveless upbringing, so what was my excuse?

( _Would you like to borrow my scissors, peasant?_ she laughs like it's hilarious) _._

  
Being stuck inside had made me more reactive. My temper seemed to be shorter than usual, and I spent far too much time alone. Sokka’s humor was met with scorn, Suki’s kindness with indifference, and even Gran-Gran’s generosity with abject gratitude. I knew I could have pretended a little better for my family, but winter was so dull and gray and cold, I felt volatile at attempts of color. I didn’t recognize myself, and the only times I did were when I could trudge outside among the silent tundra, where everything I touched was brittle and cold and the landscape was vacuous. (A comfort, I think, to walk among what I imagined my insides looked like).

The further I retreated inward, the more explosive I got outward.

( _Explosive is not the right word, waterbender_ , Azula taunts. _You of all people should know ice only shatters or melts. Which will it be?)._

Sokka knew more than he let on. I could sense he wanted to ask me what was wrong- times when I forgot to laugh at a joke, or when he had to say my name one too many times before I answered, or at its worst, when I iced myself into my house for days (he was kind enough to ignore my red-rimmed eyes when he came to check on me).

He always picked his moments to bring things like this up. (He had gotten very good at tact after all.)

His moment came in the form of a brutal nightmare that woke me up screaming. (A little girl lost in the blizzard, frostbite eating away at her from head to toe, reaching for me with black hands because I was wielding blue fire.)

Sokka and Suki had to wake up Pakku just to get in my room, where they found me encapsulated in a sphere of ice.

Sokka questioned me the next day. He asked me what was wrong, and I said nothing. He said he knew something had been wrong for a while. ( _People don’t sleep-bend themselves into a ball of ice unless they’re the Avatar, Katara_!). This led to back and forth bantering about how he didn’t know everything about waterbending, which led to bickering about how I was distracting him from his point about something being wrong. When I contradicted said point _again_ , it led to an argument about how stubborn I was, which led to a rather undignified screaming match that ended in a “I know you are but what am I!”

Suki intervened at that point. (Not our best moment.)

He backed off after that. I think I had Suki to thank for it. He didn’t try to question me again although he would still look at me with worry.

Suki looked at me almost…knowingly. Strangely enough, Gran-Gran looked at me in much the same way. They looked at me like we were all in on some secret together. (I wanted to beg them to tell me what it was because I just wasn’t getting it).

After the nightmare incident, I kept to myself even more than normal, for their sake's mostly. I was tired of disappointing the people I loved

.

I tried several times to write Zuko a letter because I desperately wanted to latch onto his idea and let it repair the line that snapped between us, but every time I sat down to write, everything I wanted to say sounded too sad and too personal and too much like a bad idea.

I sit at my vanity now, staring at the same blank piece of paper I got out when winter started and told myself I would at least work up the courage to write his name on it.

I look at my ice mural, and I reach out to touch one of the flames. Grounded. _Tethered_.

Bitterness flows through me, and I mold the icy flame into a star-shaped scar.

( _You’re shattering, ice-girl,_ Azula says. _Can’t_ _you feel the cracks?)._

I sighed. ( _That sounded like a yes_ ).

* * *

  
It started almost as soon as we declared the war officially won, which was also around the time I started making lists in my head. My profound relief at winning the war was met by my anxiety for what would happen next. (Can teenage soldiers mend as well as they fight?).

I started asking myself impossible questions and remembering things I needed to let go.

I learned not to speak these things aloud, but inside, my agitation wrapped around me and formed a roadblock. (Water should never be blocked; it must flow free or else it will pile up, tepid and dirty until the pressure builds and destroys). When my anger or anxiety or agitation reached a fever pitch, I found myself releasing destructive pressure.  
It started small; I would accidentally freeze my tea when I was alone.

It grew a little bigger when I started freezing my bath water and forming whirlpools in water glasses.

The incidents were always accidents. I’d be lost in a memory or a feeling or a painful thought, and my energy would get away from me and expend itself all at once.

It reminded me of the erratic control I had when I first learned bending.

  
I was still healing Zuko when the incidents began. Iroh helped keep the nobles at bay while he healed, sending out cease fires and assertive notifications that Ozai had fallen and Zuko would be crowned. He was coming from Ba Sing Se but had friends in the city that would keep an eye out for anyone looking to take advantage in the immediate fallout.

Our friends sent a letter about their success, writing that they would be there as soon as they could. They were going to check on our allies around the Earth Kingdom first and carry a few friends back home to their families. (We never said it out loud, but when we received that letter, the question drifted between us: _how did we all survive?_ ).

Its answer was swept under the rug with all the others.

Zuko didn’t comment on the fact his father was still alive, but I didn’t have to ask to know what he was thinking. ( _How did we all survive_ , indeed). 

We didn’t talk about Azula, either. We walked her down to the holding cells of the palace, a fireproof cell intended to cage firebenders. I iced a second door just to be safe. There were no guards. She remained eerily quiet and docile after the sobbing. It didn’t suit her. I wanted to ask him what he was going to do with her, or maybe _for_ her, but I was healing a deadly wound she inflicted, so I kept my mouth shut. 

The first few healing sessions were bad. The internal damage ran deep and a lot of it required time, even with my bending. He seemed lucid enough until I started pushing deeper with my healing, and he started getting fevers.

The nights were the worst for him. He would get fever dreams, thrashing around in his bed violently and body temperature so high, I could barely touch him. I would get close, hands covered with water, trying in vain to cool him down, but every time I sat on the bed, he would grab my arms, so hot I thought it would burn and pull me closer, mumbling things in a panicked frenzy.

Sometimes it was in a mad dread of broken phrases like _you never held back, it was wrong,_ _it was cruel_ , _she always lies, always, always, always..._

The desperation in his voice scared me. He looked right at me when he would mumble, but he was seeing someone else. His hold was vice-like, and I didn’t bother trying to heal him. I just waited him out. 

Other times, his fever would lend to softer murmurings. When I would get close, he would still grab my arms in much the same was as before, except much more gently. I could have broken out of his hold if I had really wanted, but I never did. His mumbling was very different.

It was things like _two halves, such cold hands, we have that in common, it’s a funny thing, two parts of the same whole, ocean eyes, sea foam eyes, they run so deep, how deep do they go..._

He would look right at me and in me and through me. These fits of his scared me more than the other because I knew it was me he was seeing. 

I could usually coax him into letting me heal him these times, although as soon as i started trailing over his face and arms and chest in an attempt to reduce his temperature, he would start to play with my hair, running his fingers through the ends and wrapping them around the curls like it was the most natural thing in the world.

When he did that, I couldn’t help but reciprocate. I would brush his hair back, keeping my encased hand of cooling water across his forehead and whisper things myself.

Things about bullsharks and oasis water and moon spirits. I would whisper things until he fell asleep. I think my words soothed more than my hands; though it may have been my imagination, his body seemed to cool down when I talked about arctic caves and the ice gnomes rumored to live there.

The fevers broke after the first few days, but I had already been in the habit of sleeping on the chaise by the bed, so I stayed.

You know, in case of an emergency.

He tried to fight with me over taking the bed, but seeing as he could hardly stand on his own, I won the argument fairly easily.

I spent most of my time in his rooms, venturing out to get us food and do a little recon around the palace. It was empty. It appeared anyone who might have stayed fled in the uncertainty of what to expect from Zuko. It was unsettling, an empty palace. It reminded me of the stories my mother told me of families disappearing in the snow and ghosts haunting empty ice houses. I brought food to Azula, too. He asked me about it only once, and he didn’t thank me when I told him, but he didn’t have to; I knew.

I would slip the food into her cell wordlessly and pick it up the next day to check if she was eating.

She was just as silent and empty as her home, and I found it just as unsettling. 

She didn’t eat much. Just enough.

I would go outside to bend when Zuko would nap. I was trying to expend as much energy as possible in an effort to stop the whirlpools and ice daggers that kept coming out of me, but it wasn't helping my problem at all. 

Zuko knew something was wrong. 

I kept insisting I was fine until we got in an argument about it, and I unintentionally pulled the humidity from the air and made it snow...in his bedroom....in the summer. I kinda had to tell him at that point.  
  
We stayed up all night talking about it. He was still healing from his wound, but it became his personal mission to help me figure it out.

His healing sessions became my healing sessions as well.

He suspected it was my body’s way of coping with everything we went through, but I pointed out losing control of my bending was not exactly what I would call coping, so we tried to come up with solutions.

He first suggested I try spending time in his mother’s garden-he said he found comfort in it as a kid, so maybe I could find peace.

I tried, but after an accidental tsunami in the turtle duck pond, resulting in a lot of squawking and two bites to my legs, we changed tactics.

He recommended meditation, but all the quiet time was when the voices started.  
I stopped meditating.

  
We tried to think in terms of spirituality and chi. My knowledge came from water tribe customs and Aang; his knowledge from fire nation customs and his uncle, but it turns out we were both terrible listeners because the conversation ended in a lot of “umms” and “I think he said this” and “it was either this or this,” so for both our sake's, we let that idea go.

  
We decided in the end to just talk, choosing to take our minds off our pain. (My wound, we decided, might just need time, too).

We talked about the war ending, about the next steps, about what we planned to do. ( _Rule a nation; rebuild the south_ ). I felt the calmest when I healed him.

  
We grew closer. It was inevitable, after all. He nearly died for me, and while I believe he would have done it for any of us because had had grown into someone selfless and brave, if a little impulsive, the truth was, he didn’t take it for anyone. He took it for me.

And I didn’t know how to feel about it.

( _Haven’t we always been two sides of the same coin, even as enemies? How long could we keep circling each other until we met in the middle_?)

Again, with the questions.

  
The conversations grew increasingly more personal. ( _What if they only see my father; how do I rule a nation that banished me; what about my mother?)_  
I held his hand when he talked about these things, which quickly became a habit. I’d usually come to heal him in the evening, and we’d start talking about something mundane and then we’d get quiet.

I would grab his hand, or he would grab mine (an attempt, I think, to try and tether ourselves to something that felt solid) and then we’d say something we feared, ( _I’ll look like my father in the crown_ ) or something we regretted ( _I couldn’t save Jet, it’s my fault he died_ ) or something that couldn’t be said in the daytime ( _I have nightmares about drowning in the north; I have nightmares about suffocating in the ground_ ).  
Admitting those things changed us. Holding hands turned into holding each other.

After a healing session, our new routine was having him sling an arm around my shoulders while I held his opposite hand in my lap.

If I were sharing a war story, I would grip his hand tight enough to cut off circulation. (He never complained).

If he were telling a war story, I would hold his hand gently between both of mine, though his palm would flare at times, nearly hot enough to burn. (I never complained either).

If we were talking about something lighter, like Sokka’s antics or his uncle’s proverbs, I’d play idly with his fingers. (My favorite).

If we were remembering something together in a moment of nostalgia, I would interlace our fingers and run circles on the back of his hand with my thumb. (His favorite).  
My incidents happened less.   
  
Then the full moon hit.  
I left him earlier than normal to practice my bending, feeling a drive to divest myself of all the energy I had. I was slightly frightened of what it would do if I left it to its own devices. I was in the garden again, bending the water gently and fluidly. (I was still trying to make up to the turtle ducks). I had felt more relaxed than I had in a while, listening to the sparrowkeets twitter lazily and the dragonflies buzz around, their wings lighting up every so often. It reminded me of the stories Gran would tell us about fairies that lived in the Earth Kingdom.

It made me feel remarkably close to peaceful.  
  
That’s when I noticed that the flowers had begun blooming.

I should’ve known.  
Firelilies.  
A torrent of emotions I thought I was healing broke loose and created a negative feedback reaction in my body. It started right behind my eyelids, traveled through my jaw, my shoulders, my arms. It went through my heart, my core, and my legs.

I thought of Aang and Sokka, attacking each other, attacking me.

I thought of myself, pulling strings and controlling a body with a godlike power.  
( _Bloodbender, did you forget about me? Look at you, cozying next to the enemy. Weak, stupid girl. You’re the last of our kind. You’re a disgrace to the southern water tribe. Wasted girl. Kill, kill, kill, little puppet-master…_ )

I thought of Yon Rha, of soldiers I controlled, grown men who succumbed to my will like dolls.

( _And you liked that feeling, didn’t you? Fire is not meant to be understood, stupid girl, it’s meant to be put out. Why care when you can control, bloodbender? Don’t you want to have a fire prince at your command? Imagine what you could do_ …)  
The turtle ducks came to my rescue again, squawking loud enough to break through the sound barrier.

They pulled me from Hama’s hissing. The water in the pond was frozen.  
That wasn’t all. I looked to the trees and _felt_ more than saw what I was doing.

The sparrowkeets were silent.

I held heartbeats in my unnatural stance, the power within me keeping them frozen in time, holding their beaks closed and bodies still. I released them immediately and dropped to my knees. ( _It felt good didn’t it, bloodbender?)_  
  
I ran. my body knew where it was going before my mind could catch up.  
I barreled into his room, making him shoot up in bed and wince, eyeing me in alarm.  
  
“Katara, what’s wro-“ he couldn’t finish his sentence before I was gripping him, having flung myself in his lap without much thought. He held me firmly, and after feeling me shake, he stroked my hair and whispered soothing things in a voice more tender than I’d ever heard. Things like “you’re okay,” “it’s alright,” and “you’re safe” over and over until I stopped shaking and hid my face in his shoulder.  
He waited.  
I told him about the firelilies, about bloodbending in a forest for the first time, about what happened in the garden, about the dreams I’d never spoken aloud before. Vicious dreams about killing animals and controlling my friends and laughing in a way that sounds like Hama ( _Congratulations_ , _you’re a bloodbender now_ ). I told him about how anxious I was about moving on and how I couldn’t figure out why my control was slipping. ( _Water should heal, shouldn’t it? Why do I keep hurting everything?)_

I was crying by the end of it.  
He held me until I fell asleep.

  
Things changed again.  
I started to sleep in his bed. We didn’t say it, but we were both thinking about nights on the road when sleeping bags were too close, and you couldn’t stretch your arms out in any direction without touching someone.

Pillow lines were not crossed, but it was a comfort to know we could roll over, stretch out, and touch someone real and alive and warm if we wanted. It was intimate, and being so close to each other in the dark changed the nature of our conversations.

We talked about the crystal caves. ( _Do you ever think we should go back? Do you think it would help us move on?_ I only shrugged, which he felt laying next to me. I think he took it as a no, but I meant for it to convey that I was feeling myself mending right where I was).

We talked about the lists I had started to make. ( _It seemed simpler when all that was on the list was ending the war. Isn’t that sad?_ He held my hand when I said it, which I took as a yes, but I think he meant to convey that he felt a little sad, too.)

Above all, we talked about how we were constantly saving each other. ( _Someone’s got to do it. You’re kind of a mess, you know?_ I don’t remember which one of us said this, but it can apply to both so it doesn’t really matter).

These conversations where whispered, despite the fact we were alone in an empty palace, and our heads would always bend closer and closer like we were trying to fuse our minds. My secrets became his, and his secrets became mine.

Sometimes if we didn’t feel like talking, I would help him pace the length of his bedroom. We would walk from the door to the balcony to the bed and back. It involved a lot of limping and wincing, so I would usually do a healing session afterwards. These felt different, too. I blushed a lot more when I had to take off the bandages, which irritated me to no end. He didn’t help with the way he played with the ends of my hair lightly, and I wasn’t sure if it was to take his mind off the pain or if it was an absent-minded gesture or if it was because he felt the same invisible thread I did that seemed to keep us from floating away. ( _Tethered_ ).

(I didn't think he remembered any of his strange fever whispers,but when he played with my hair like this, I almost asked). 

Sometimes we didn’t want to sleep at all. (Holding someone’s hand can work wonders for nightmares, but there are some images too dark and persistent to be scared away by human comfort). On those nights, when we could feel an anguished dream waiting, we would practice our bending from his bed to stay awake. My water flickered like flames around a campfire, and his fire swayed back and forth like the push and pull of a tide. We were trying to learn how to let fire and water coexist. They didn’t always have to snuff each other out, did they?

We were in a world of our own, and his bedroom became like something sacred. It was a haven for me.

No, that wasn’t it- it was him. Realizing this cut me to the core. I felt like I was carrying something vitally important and perilous, and if I were to drop it, it would wreak havoc.

(It was how I imagined I would feel if I could shoot lightning).

The healing sessions, the whispers, the touches- they had made me feel more connected to my chi and my energy and my ocean spirits more than any temple I had entered. The gods my mother prayed to weren’t there to save her, and they weren’t there to save me, but Zuko was. I had come to think of Zuko’s bedroom like a sanctuary. ( _Weren’t we still technically refugees?_ _Doesn’t it feel divine in here? Don’t you lay your secrets down like offerings_?)

The ache eased until it was just background noise. Our nightmares happened less, and my incidents stopped entirely, though I never went back to the garden.

  
We were going on three weeks now, and he was as healed as my ability allowed. The rest would be up to time, which was feeling borrowed at this point.  
I wanted to see everyone, but I knew our little microcosm would expand and things would be different.

What I had found with Zuko became a cornerstone that I wanted to grow on. We were tethered, weren’t we?  
  
Things between us changed for the final time when everyone finally arrived.

Everyone, of course, including Mai.

* * *

  
  
“Katara!” I practically jump out of my own skin. I look up from the blank sheet of paper, frowning a little that I hadn’t even managed to write his name. ( _Coward_ , Azula laughed). I take a deep breath and walk from my room to the front door to bend it open. I was expecting Sokka but was surprised to see it was Suki standing there, having shed her water tribe coats for the casual gear she trains in.

She eyes me for a moment, taking in my unwashed hair and crumpled clothes. (It had been a while since I left my room). I felt mildly self-conscious at her close scrutiny, but she just gave me a crooked smile.  
“Let’s spar” was all she said.  
I hesitated briefly, but before I had the chance to protest, she walked out the door. I followed her down the insulated passageway into a small training room Pakku made Sokka for weapons training. I stopped at the entrance, a bad feeling fluttering around in my stomach at the thought of sparring Suki. ( _You should never back down from a challenge, peasant_ ). The bad feeling grew.

  
“Suki, you know it’s a bad idea to spar with a waterbender in the dead of winter, right?”  
She only smirked.  
“Of course I do, I’m not stupid.” She gave me a wicked smile. “That’s why you’re not using bending.”

I opened and closed my mouth several times.

  
“Suki, you’re the leader of the Kyoshi warriors. I’m not stupid either.” Her grin only widened.

  
“Katara, I never pegged you as a pig-chicken.” Low blow. She’s learned from Sokka how to taunt me into doing things. We were all too competitive and too stubborn for our own good.

( _Humiliate her then, peasant_ ). The voices egging me on were making me nervous, sending warning bells in my head that I should ice myself back in my room. I tried one last time.

“I’m just saying, I’ve never trained hand to hand before. Don’t you think Sokka would be a better sparring partner for you?”

She responded by making clucking noises. Sokka definitely taught her a few things.  
I narrowed me eyes. “I’m not a pig chicken.”

  
  
It started innocently enough; Suki laid me out flat the first few times, and that was with her holding back. My frustration was fairly evident because I felt like an idiot and Azula’s taunts at how much I sucked were not helping. Suki took pity on me after about the 12th time I got knocked down and showed me a few blocking moves.

(I told her I didn’t know why I needed to learn this as a master waterbender, but she started to oink at me, which I glared indignantly at, but listened to her anyway).

  
After the first hour, I could at least hold my own for longer than 60 seconds. Despite that, she was _still_ holding back, and I was getting nothing out of it except a sore butt.

It really couldn’t even be called sparring, and I couldn’t understand why she was so determined to keep me there. She’d get more done _alone_ than with me.

Unless this was some kind of payback for how moody I had been all winter.

Suki wasn’t that cruel.

That being said, she seemed to be enjoying herself while I was getting increasingly more tense with each take-down. Azula’s commentary had stopped at least.

It was like even the Azula in my head was too embarrassed to watch me.

  
“Why didn’t you ask Sokka?” I questioned again, after picking myself up yet again, rubbing my rear end and throwing my braid back over my shoulder.

  
“Because I asked you,” she said vaguely, sweeping my legs out from under me in the same breath, knocking me down. I gritted my teeth, feeling irritation join my frustration at her evasive answer. I rubbed my temples and clenched and relaxed my fists several times. The ice called to me.

  
( _Honestly, you call yourself a master, ice girl?_ Azula was back). I suppressed a groan. I had jinxed myself, it seems.  
( _Humiliation to the south_ , a hiss came). This stopped me cold.

Azula was one thing, but Hama’s voice in my head was something else entirely. Continuing to “spar” seemed like an even worse idea now.  
I placed my hands over my stomach just to feel myself breathe and turned to Suki with an expression I hoped seemed annoyed. I could live with that. If I looked panicked, she would know something was up and then the questions would come.  
“Suki, you and I both know this is pointless. You’re holding back, and I can’t feel my butt. I think we should call it."

She advanced towards me slower than what I knew she was capable of and attacked with her series of jabs. I blocked all save one, which got me in the gut. She followed with a kick to the back of my knee and I dropped. I huffed and glared at her.  
“It would be more productive if you’d actually listen to what I said.” The annoyance reared its ugly head, but I forced myself to stay calm.

“I am listening, Suki, but you’re the leader of a group of elite warriors. This is my first time training hand to hand. Don’t you think Sokka would be more at your level?”

Her gaze hardened at me for a moment, and she opened her mouth and closed it like she changed her mind. She smirked at me again.

“Honestly, Katara, I think your Gran-Gran would be more _at my level_.” It wasn’t what she wanted to say, but that didn’t matter. She was mocking me, and my competitive nature took over.  
It was more or less the straw that broke the camel-bear’s back.

  
“Oh really?” I said. I dropped into a bending stance and bent a water whip at her, fast enough to take her by surprise and knock her down.  
“Hey! I thought I said no bending.” She looked up at me, frowning slightly.

She was wet now and was trying to pin me with her best warrior’s glare, but there was a little twinkle in her eye. I was the one smirking now.  
“What’s the matter, Suki? Are you a pig-chicken?”

  
She stopped holding back.

  
We danced around the small room with a lethal intensity. I used water whips to act as punches and kicks. (I refused to use ice; that would be cheating).

Suki moved with the speed of a pygmy-puma and didn’t even seem to break a sweat at dodging my attacks. She slowly made her way closer and closer, and soon I was dodging her jabs and kicks with very controlled micro-movements so that I could bend in close range. It was something I hadn’t done since the war.

I realized this was the first time I’d sparred with anyone for months. I practiced my bending alone most days and hadn’t done anything this intense since we had to stop venturing out to rebuild, and I hadn’t properly trained with a partner in ages.

It felt good. I felt freer than I had since I’d been home. If I wasn’t trying to kick her butt, I would’ve hugged Suki. This realization made me laugh out loud.  
It startled her enough that I was able to knock her down.

She looked a little affronted but was grinning at me with that knowing look again.

We both paused and gave each other a slight nod, like we were trying to convey how much we had needed this. We gave our brief truce a moment of silence.

  
Then Suki’s smile quickly faded into a determined scowl and she stood up, warrior again.  
I took my stance.

  
And then I heard her hissing.  
( _You know what you need to do, Bloodbender. Didn’t I teach you how to win a fight? Warriors don’t care about their opponents. I told you that_ ).  
No. I fumbled backwards a little, dodging one of Suki’s kicks weakly.

( _Feel her heartbeat. It’s so strong. Imagine what you could do with a leader like her. Don’t you want to be strong, too_?)

  
“No,” I said it out loud this time. I heard Suki say something as she jabbed, but I couldn’t hear anything outside the hissing.

( _Bloodbender, do it_ ). I struck with a whip but missed and stumbled back a few steps.  
( _Look at you. Weak, weak girl. Take control, Bloodbender! Like I showed you. You are ruthless, aren’t you?_ ).

  
“No!” I said it louder this time and took several steps back until I hit a wall. Suki said something again, (called my name maybe?) but I couldn’t hear her.  
( _Now, Bloodbender! Feel her veins working. She may be a warrior, but you are a puppet master. Take her!_ ).  
I dropped to my knees.  
Suki has almost reached me now, the look on her face showing panic, eyes wide with concern. I could see her mouth forming my name.

I froze her feet to the ground where she stood, terrified of what would happen if she got closer to me.

( _Take her, little bloodbender, little puppet master, little killer. She cant go anywhere now_ ).

“NO!” I yelled this out, my head dropping to my chest, blood rushing in my ears like I was underwater.  
( _TAKE HER NOW_ ).

  
I screamed a battle-cry at the top of my lungs, the water I used in the fight transforming into pointed, jagged shards.

  
“NO!” I heard, but it wasn’t from me that time.

Suki yelled this, and I realized the shards were surrounding my body, mere centimetres from impaling every vital organ I knew would kill.

  
I made eye contact with her, and she was saying things again, but it was too rapid for me to read her lips. The blood was raging in my ears.

Her eyes had me pinned- wide and unflinching and pleading.

I let the shards drop, unfreezing her in the process.

I started shaking, and I pulled my knees up, tucking my head in between them to try and stop the blood rushing in my head. I felt dizzy. 

( _Honestly, are all waterbenders this dramatic?_ Azula mocked. _If you wanted to die, I could’ve given you less painful options_ ).

My eyes were on the floor. I couldn’t even look at Suki, which was why I didn’t notice she had made her way over to me.

  
I was not expecting the arms that came around me. She was hugging me. I don’t think we had ever embraced before.

She was squeezing me tightly, and I let her. I didn’t cry, but once the blood finally calmed and my head stopped spinning, I pulled away, feeling sick, and dry heaved a few times.

She didn’t say anything. She rubbed my back as I dry heaved and then pulled me up by my hand, wrapping a protective arm around my shoulders. She walked me back through the tunnels to my house. We passed Sokka who had made his way down after hearing the screaming. He took one look at the state of the two of us and his eyes bugged. He opened his mouth but before a word could get out, Suki gave a small but firm shake of her head.

He shut it.  
When we got to my room, she murmured she would be right back.

  
I felt ill, nearly on the verge of heaving again.

While she was gone, I bent ice balls and threw them at the wall just to hear them shatter. It was a violent noise, and it didn’t help my turmoil. ( _You know exactly what would help you, bloodben-)._

  
Suki came barging back in loudly. She was bundled up in her heavy parka again and was carrying two large quilts under both arms, balancing a tray of food in her hands.

Sokka was right behind her, arms piled high with pillows that I assumed were from their room. He seemed wary and more than a little suspicious, but he didn’t grumble or joke.

I don’t know what Suki told him, but he deposited the pillows on my bed and only stopped to ruffle my hair a little before leaving.  
  


Suki turned to face me, gesturing to the open door, which I closed, feeling a little suspicious myself.  
She smiled her thanks and fussed over the tray of food for a bit. She eventually turned around, hands on her hips, and assessed my room.

Her eyes fell on my walls covered with designs. She gave a small gasp.  
“Did you do this?” She asked, sounding almost awed. I only nodded. I forgot this was the first time she had ever been in my room.

Come to think of it, this was the longest Suki and I spent alone, just the two of us.  
She walked over to the wall and took in all the figures, letting her fingers drift over the fan and the Unagi. She brushed it lightly and turned to face me with a little smile.

She shook her head a little to herself and got that determined look on her face again.

She narrowed her eyes. My hands twitched with nerves. I felt like I was awaiting judgment. She looked around my room sharply and gave a single, sharp nod.

I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I could only watch in confusion as she started moving my furniture around.

She moved the vanity closer to the bed, and settled the chair on top of it precariously. She moved to the other side of the room and pushed the dresser to the other side of the vanity with brute strength, essentially making a strange triangle of furniture in front of me . She grabbed all the pillows on my bed as well as the ones Sokka brought and threw them in the middle of the triangle. She threw every fur I had in the room down on top of the pillows. She carefully placed the tray of food underneath the chair legs, as if to shield it, and then to my surprise, got on her knees in the middle and grabbed the two huge quilts.

It was only when she started setting the pillows up like a wall and draping the blankets across the furniture tops that she looked up at me with an expectant look.  
“Well are you gonna get down here and help?” She asked, gesturing to the floor next to her.  
“Help with what?” I asked, my voice sounding a little scratchy. She just laughed.

“Isn’t it obvious? We’re building a fort.”

  
  
I hadn’t built a pillow fort in ages, not since Sokka and I were kids. It was several degrees warmer inside and the smell of sea prunes from the food she brought was overwhelming. As we sat together, canopied by familiar quilts and old family furs, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of comfort.

The point, I think, Suki was trying to accomplish.

I thought of the last time I had felt that way. (Red bedroom, orange fire, gold boy.) I felt a little pang.

  
We ate in silence, Suki consuming her portion heartily while I could only pick at the food and sip the tea. It soothed my throat, but I was still a bundle of nerves. Eventually, when we finished, she pushed the tray out of the fort and turned to face me. She arranged the pillows behind her, cushioning herself against the dresser so she could sit with her back propped up and her legs stretched out.

She looked at ease, but her face was thoughtful. I felt my palms start to sweat.  
  
“Do you know why I came here for the winter?” she asked at last. I blinked. I was confused. I thought this was the part where she was supposed to ask what happened to me, or what was wrong with me, or who in the world was I was yelling at back there. Wasn’t that what the cozy fort was for? To soften the blow of the incoming interrogation?

Feeling certain she would have some sort of point for asking me this, I think about it. I know the reasons she gave everyone about why she came here; she welcomed a challenge. 

I figured she would appreciate honesty over anything else.  
“To spend time with Sokka.” I say it slowly, watching as she gives me a small smile.  
“That’s one way to put it,” she frowns slightly. “I came because I wanted to see if I could bear living here, and I don’t just mean the weather. I wanted to see if I could picture moving here to be with Sokka.”

I felt floored at this admission. I was shocked she told me in the first place and more confused than ever about the unexpected direction this conversation had taken. In the moment, however, I was stunned that she was genuinely considering leaving the Earth Kingdom for good. I knew she loved my brother, but she was a leader and a warrior and always said she would put her duty first.

  
“You would leave the Kyoshi warriors?” I asked incredulously.

She looked at the quilts above us for a while.

  
“If you want to know the truth, I really don’t know. I love your brother, Katara, but I love my warriors too. It’s not like Sokka and I plan on getting married soon or anything, but we can’t be together halfway around the world.”

  
I felt another pang at that. ( _The fire nation will always welcome the water tribe with open arms_ ).

  
“If I want to be with Sokka-live with him, marry him, start a family with him, it would mean giving up a duty and a home I’ve known my entire life.” She paused for a moment, gathering her thoughts. I waited. She didn’t look at me when she spoke again.

  
“The war changed some things, you know? I felt like we were all so lucky just to survive, it made me think about what my priorities actually were. They rearranged a little. I have a duty as a warrior but living through what we did showed me that I have a duty to the girl in me, too. I love leading the Kyoshi warriors, Katara, but after the war, I came here to figure out if I love Sokka more.” She looked back at me.  
“Love means sacrifice.”

  
A swell like heartache fills my chest. I knew that better than most. Wasn’t the fact I was alive and well proof of that? Wasn’t I constantly torn between what duty actually meant in the aftermath of the war? I felt a little dumbfounded at hearing Suki articulate what I had been feeling for so long. To be honest, I also felt a little honored at hearing something so painfully personal, it made me feel protective.

If I couldn’t protect my own heart, maybe I could help protect hers.  
“And Sokka?” I asked. “What would he sacrifice?” I wasn’t trying to call out my brother. I loved the doofus, but he could be so oblivious sometimes, and I wondered if he knew how much Suki was willing to give up for him.

She smiled at me.

“Katara, why do you think your dad has really been in the North for so long?”

I blink at her again. This conversation was frazzling my brain. I speak slowly when I answer.

“He’s acquainting himself with Chief Arnook. He says they’re exchanging customs on how each tribe is ruled.” I feel my palms start to sweat again at her progressively widening smile.

“Katara, do you think that takes months?” I feel my stomach drop. I only stare at her, and she takes the hint.

“Sokka asked your father several months ago what would happen if he were to…give up becoming the next Chief. It’s all just been talk. Sokka hasn’t abdicated the chiefdom or whatever it would be called, but he told me he would if it was what I wanted.”

My mouth dropped open in shock.

  
“He’s coming with me back to Kyoshi in the spring. He tells me it’s so that he can enjoy it without getting kidnapped and beat up by a bunch of girls again, but I know his head is in the same place as mine.” She laughs a little at that. Oh, Sokka.. He really deserves more credit than he gets. A thought comes to me then.

“What _would_ happen if Sokka wasn’t the chief?” She looked nervous and hesitated a moment too long.

“Suki?” I prompted, my voice a little higher than normal. She took a deep breath.

“It would technically go to you,” and when she heard my screech and saw my eyes bug, she began speaking very quickly, “but no decisions have been made yet and they would never force you to be chief if you didn’t want it. Besides, The North isn’t particularly thrilled about it, which is why it’s been taking your dad so long to get back.” I groan. _Our conversations can get heated_ he had said. Yeah, no wonder. I would love to see the faces of the men in the north when my dad told them Sokka might step down. I feel far too many things at once to possibly sort this bit of news out right now. I would definitely have to deal with this later.

I shake my head a little at Sokka’s impulsiveness and make a mental note to berate him for not telling me, although seeing as how I had been actively shutting him out for months, I couldn’t blame him. Why couldn’t I possess their bravery, their certainty at leaving everything they’ve ever known to fall back on another person? I think of Zuko’s shy smile and honey eyes. ( _We were connected, weren’t we_?) I sigh.

Would Sokka really give up the South? I glance at the girl next to me.

Yes, he really would.

“Suki, my brother loves it here, but you know he would choose you, don’t you?” and I believe it with every fiber of my being. Suki gives me a smile, though it doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

“I don’t want him to have give up his people for me. I know it’s not an easy decision to make.”

( _It’s not so easy to leave a place that’s familiar_ ). I cover my wince by shifting positions. I change the direction of the conversation.

  
“And how do you feel being here?” I ask. She looks at me again, still a little sad.

  
“Homesick,” my stomach clenches, and then “but I felt the same way in Kyoshi, only worse. Seeing Sokka at the summit felt more like coming home to me than going back to Kyoshi after the war.”

I couldn’t help the humorless chuckle that comes out of me. ( _…or people that are familiar_ ).

“My warriors are like my sisters, though, and I’m not a chief, but they look to me like one. I don’t want Sokka to have to give up his people, but I don’t want to give up mine, either. They feel like home, too, but I can’t exactly split myself in half. Do you know what I mean?”

I look at her earnestly.

  
“More than you know.”

She’s looking at me in that knowing way again. I brace myself.

  
“Katara, I came back here to spend time with you too, you know. I already think of you like a sister.” My eyes prick, and I feel slightly betrayed by my body. _No crying_ , I remind it. _Remember? We don’t do that anymore_. I blink rapidly before looking at Suki again.

She’s looking at me with all the concern and love and understanding I have seen in Sokka and dad and Gran, and I find myself selfishly hoping a girl raised on green grass and mossy rivers can find a home in blue ice and pillowed snow.

  
“Katara, I was there the whole time, you know-for all the chaos during the war and all the chaos after. I know I’m not you’re first choice when you need to talk, but it seems no one else is either. At least not here," she shoots me a pointed look, "and things have obviously been bad. I’m just offering to listen.” 

  
I must’ve looked a little panicky because she holds her hands up.

  
“Look, I’m not asking you to tell me everything. I just want you to know that we’ve all been a little…worried. I’ve seen that look on your face before, Katara. I train warriors for _war_. You’re miles away sometimes, aren’t you?” She paused. I was staring intently at a pillow on the ground. I said nothing but spared a glance up at her, and she gave a small nod of acknowledgment.

“I wanted to spar with you to try and get you out of your own head for a while. It seemed to help at first. One minute you were laughing, which you haven’t done all winter, but the next, you almost…” she trailed off uncomfortably. I was still staring at the pillows and waited, but she didn’t speak for a long time. I finally looked up at her. Her face looked a little pinched, and she was blinking a lot. I knew what that meant.

  
“I wasn’t trying to hurt myself, Suki. I promise I didn’t do it on purpose.” She shot me an incredulous look. (I could almost hear Sokka’s voice saying “ _people don’t accidentally impale themselves, Katara!_ ”).

Her eyes were getting glassier, tears threatening to spill at any moment, so I tried to explain quickly.

  
“I’ve been having trouble with my chi lately, and it’s been affecting my control. I was terrified I was going to hurt you.” I looked back down at the pillows.

“All I knew is I just wanted them to stop.” I said this quietly, nearly a whisper, feeling shame at my admittance. I wasn’t planning on telling her this, but Suki had just seen and _heard_ some of my demons come out.

She deserved honesty.

(She built a pillow fort for me).

  
“Them?” I heard her ask at last.  
“The voices.” I said as calmly as I could. I still didn’t look up. 

“I see,” she said. I risked peeking up at her, but her expression was unreadable. I stared back down at the pillows and idly picked at the fur.

She reached out to still my hand.

“Katara, you’re not the first war veteran to hear voices in your head.” Her voice was soft, reminding me of the way I would comfort Aang or Sokka during the war.

“Some of my own girls have dealt with something similar. I mean, they’re not benders, so I can’t help with that part, but I know you can’t just keep it all to yourself. It’ll eat you from the inside out.” 

I hugged my knees to my chest. She knew something inside of me wasn’t right, wasn't normal, wasn't _good_ , and she was telling me she understood. That I wasn’t stranded.

I knew she meant it, but I was worried my insides were already eaten up. What if they were too crooked, too tarnished, too poisonous to bare to someone else? What if there was nothing left but chewed up bits of my heart and lungs and soul?

She was looking at me so honest and open and trying so hard to tell me _something_. She was a warrior, and she was a leader, and she was my brother’s girlfriend, and she was one the bravest people I knew.

Brave enough to fight in a war and love my brother afterwards. Brave enough to travel to the South Pole in the winter and spar with an emotionally unstable waterbender just because I needed it.

She tried to help me earlier, and I almost hurt us both.

She noticed my hesitation.

“I’ll tell you what,” she said, shifting around to lounge on her back, eyes to the quilts above our heads, “For the whole night, I say we let this pillow fort be our home. I say nothing outside of you and me and this fort exists. I say that as long as we’re in here, nothing can touch us-not the voices or the war or the indecisions or the future. I say for at least one night we let ourselves feel perfectly safe and perfectly selfish and perfectly in place. In the morning, we’ll have to make the bed and make the decisions, but for tonight, I say we let these pillows and blankets keep our secrets.”

I had grown up too fast - just like my brother, just like my friends, and thinking of a girl sobbing blue fire, just like my enemies. I tried to find closure last summer on a battlefield, and I think maybe I went about it the wrong way, skipped too many steps and fell on my face. I knew war better than I knew resolution, but sitting in a pillow fort with a teenage girl telling me we should hide from the world for a night and bare our secrets to the ears of the furniture felt like a bizarre step in the right direction.

Suki had to grow up just as quickly as I did. She coached girls to fight like a deadly and everlasting big sister. She knew when someone needed to spar and when someone needed to sit in a pillow fort, and if I wanted to be able to walk that line someday, I needed to trust that she wouldn’t run from the bones of me.

So I talked.

I told her the legacy of the Southern Water Tribe involved controlling other people, and it terrified me. I told her my mind would travel miles away to an Agni Kai, and I would wake up thinking I heard Azula sobbing. I told her I had nightmares about getting lost in a blizzard and how they were similar to the scary stories told around water tribe campfires. I told her I used to laugh at their spookiness, but they didn’t seem very funny anymore. I told her I didn’t know where my place was in this new world, and I felt like it should involve my people, but they didn’t really need me anymore. (I told her about how they never wanted to need me in the first place). I talked about how I couldn’t figure out where home was for me because it wasn’t here, and I was desperate to find it and didn’t know where to start. I told her I felt like all I did anymore was hurt the people close to me, and I thought I left that behind in the war so I would isolate myself in an effort to minimize the casualties. I told her lastly about the voices. (Not the who, but the what.) I told her they whispered all the thoughts I wouldn’t let myself think and that I worried they embodied all the worst parts of me I kept hidden inside and that one day they would take over until I became like the figures I bent on my wall-tangible but unfeeling, unmoving, and cold to the touch.

Suki listened diligently, sitting up straighter and straighter with each secret I shared. She looked pained at certain parts and swallowed hard at times, but she didn’t cry. For that, I was grateful.

We sat in silence for a while after I finished, both of us slumped into the pillows.

She was staring at the quilt above her head again, this time tracing the stitching with a finger. When she spoke, it was in the same breathless voice I had used.

It was her turn to share secrets.

She told me when she went miles away, it was to the fire nation airship. She had nightmares of falling to her death in a pit of fire, of watching Toph slip through Sokka’s fingers, and of seeing Sokka get burned alive. She told me about how she almost didn’t reach them in time and that when she thinks too hard about it, she has to grip Sokka’s hand until its purple, just to be sure he’s there. ( _Tethered_ , I think to myself). She told me the reason she appointed warriors to watch over the Firelord instead of doing it personally was because she can’t live in the heat. It reminds her too much of the Boiling Rock, and a place that brought her back to a metal jail cell and a vindictive warden could never be home. She told me about how she has her own nightmares of fighting Azula, but she hears her cold laughter, not her sobbing. She told me after all this time with my brother, she knew she wouldn’t be able to bear the thought of leaving him again. She told me when she had to leave him for the first time after the war, she was so explosive, everyone on the Island refused to spar with her. She talked about how hard it was to need someone so much when you’re a leader because it made her feel vulnerable and uncertain and she thought she left _that_ behind in the war. Finally, she told me when it came to her future, the girl inside of her made her decision long before the warrior, and she still doesn’t know how to reconcile the two.

When she was done, we fell back into silence, both of us lost in thought. I thought about our ragtag group. I loved them all and wept for them all-for the kids we were at one point and the strange adults we became at another. _What happened to those kids? Why was no one protecting them?_

"We've all been through too much, I think,"

I say it without much thought, and because I was feeling sad and exposed and a little rebellious, I ignored one of the lessons I learned in the war. 

"Aren't these things usually supposed to happen over a lifetime, not a summer? Aren't we supposed to deal with this stuff when we're older and wiser and better able to handle it at a proper age, not this hybrid one?"

I ask her these a little desperately, voice edging on hysteria.

She gives me a sad smile like she feels those questions engraved somewhere in the marrow of her. I wasn't expecting an answer, but she gives me one.

"You can't pick when your childhood ends." she pauses and looks thoughtful for a moment. "I guess we just try to do our best to live with the growing pains ." _Growing pains_ , I think, _might be a better name for the ache in my gut._

"Besides," she continues, "I don't really see it as something that's completely lost. Didn't you ever feel like you got bits and pieces back when we were all together?"

I thought of penguin-sledding with Aang in the winter for the sheer thrill of it.

I thought of mud-wrestling with Toph as a way to end an argument.

I thought of teasing Sokka over having never kissed a girl. 

I thought of bending with Zuko in his room with a playful ease he hardly ever showed.

I thought of eating sea prunes in a pillow fort. 

I spared a glance at the girl next to me. ( _I already think of you like a sister_ ).

I may have been the group's mother, but Suki will always be the big sister. A lesson, I think, _she_ learned in the war. 

All I could manage was a single nod, but she looked content. 

I felt a little ashamed of myself. 

I had spent too long withdrawing from people who needed me as much as I needed them.

I propped myself on an elbow and turned to look at her.

“Hey, Suki?” I started, drawing her from her own thoughts. She mirrored my position to look at me, eyebrows raised.

“I’m sorry. Not just for what happened today, but for how I’ve been acting since we’ve been here. Before then, too, I guess.”

I should’ve said it months ago.

Suki just grinned.

“I know, but I don’t want you to apologize, bonehead.” She cocks her head, using an expression she learned from Sokka. She was looking at me in a way he had so many times before- caring, overbearing, and slightly annoyed. 

It touched me somewhere deep.

  
I give her a look. She grinned wider.  
“I want you to heal.” She said it so matter of fact, I almost laughed.

“How exactly do I do that?” I asked instead.

“Well, finally talking to someone is a good start, hermit.” I give her a mock glare, which she pointedly ignores.

“How you heal is really up to you, but I think leaving the South Pole would be a good start.” I did laugh then.

“And where would I go?” She shrugged casually but gave me a wicked smile.

“Fire Nation?” she said it in an innocent voice, but I refused to meet her gaze.

She flopped onto her stomach and stared at me until I cracked and made eye contact.

“Oh, come on, Katara. You very obviously left out one _very important_ reason as to why you’ve been so upset.” I said nothing.

“All right, you won’t budge? I’ll say it for you. You’re in love with Zu-“

“I am not!” I sat up lightning fast, glaring at her now. She was laughing hard enough to crack a rib. When she composed herself, she gave me Sokka’s “ _do you think I’m an idiot”_ face.

I covered my face with my hands and groaned.

“I’m totally in love with Zuko.”

She chuckled but sat so that we were both facing each other cross-legged now.

“Does he know?” she asked casually. I let my hands drop and gave her a panicked expression.

“Absolutely not!” I practically screeched. She held her hands up in mock surrender and nodded.

“Why haven’t you told him?” I winced. This felt like one of those questions I would very intentionally ignore. I thought carefully.

“Because when it came down to it, he picked Mai.” She gave me a sad smile.

“You know they broke up a few months after getting back together. That was a long time ago, Katara.” I slumped a little, hearing her unspoken question: _what’s stopping you now?_

“Suki, Zuko was my best friend when the war ended. We were…” I searched for a word. (Tethered, but no, not anymore) “Close.” It was too mild and unfitting, so I tried again.

“He was something like a lifeline for me. I thought I was the same for him, but when Mai came…” I floundered again, racking my brain for a way to explain, but I realized I was just avoiding the truth of the matter. I took strength in Suki’s openness.

“He broke my heart, plain and simple.”

Suki stared at me intensely, seeming to debate inside how to proceed at this confession. She eventually gave a small nod.

“Did you know he still stares at the moon? Even after all this time. It's not every night, but I think there are times when he's...haunted. He’s kind enough to wait until he thinks I’m asleep. He just looks up at it with something like guilt. He never says anything, but sometimes I can tell he wants to. I think if he did, it would be an apology. I can’t even comfort him because I don’t think he wants me to know.”

My heart breaks all over again. 

  
“Why don’t you say anything?” I ask. It was a sad scene to think about. Sokka still feeling responsible for being unable to protect a girl that was never his to love.

  
“Because then I think he would stop doing it.” I reared back a little.

  
“Suki...don’t you want that?”

  
“He loves me.” She said this with a smile that was only a little sad. “But that doesn’t cancel out the way he loved her and the way he lost her.”

I wondered if I loved in the same was as Suki. Would I bite my tongue watching the man I wanted to be with give silent apologies to his first love? My insides flopped. _You kind of did._

“He’s trying to heal, too, you know,” and I wasn’t sure if she was talking about Zuko or Sokka, but I guess it didn't matter. I looked at Suki again. 

“What are you trying to say?” I asked her. _Why are you telling me this?_ but we are past that now. 

She cocked an eyebrow at me.

“I’m not trying to defend him, Katara, but he knew Mai from childhood, and she might’ve been so comfortable to him, so easy, he craved that after the war. It doesn’t mean he didn’t love you because believe me, he does. He has for a long time, but he’ll never think he deserves you.”

The words hurt to hear. Did Zuko really love me? Yes, but in the same way I loved him? In the soul-crushing, full-body aches, make ice flames to touch over and over again kind of way? I don't know. I never asked.

_Didn't I practically sprint to the South after the war to wrap myself up in the things that I knew, so could I blame him for doing the same? But couldn't I have been a comfort to him? Wasn't I?_

I groaned and covered my face with my hands.

“What do I do now?”

She scoffed at me.

“Tell him.” I shot her a death glare.

“It’s a little more complicated than that.”

She rolled her eyes. “In what way?”

“I thought being with Zuko would heal me completely. He helped, don’t get me wrong, but it would not have been a long-term solution. I was waiting for him to take all my aches and pains away, but that wouldn’t have been fair. If I went back now, I think it would be too easy to lean on him completely because even as a friend, you know he would let me.” ( _You’re kind of a mess you know?)_ I think it was Zuko that said it.

“There’s nothing wrong with leaning on other people, Katara.” Suki said softly, and I loved her like a sister, too.  
(Again, she built a pillow fort for me).

“I know, Suke, and I’m not giving anyone up, but I want to be able to rely on myself, too.” I pointed to my forehead. “I gotta sort out whatever is going on in here.”

Suki smiled at that. “And what about Zuko?” _What about Zuko_ is definitely one of the questions I ignore. I sigh.

“I miss him.” I say simply.

“He deserves to know.” She says back. I sigh, yet again. She was right.

We fell into a comfortable silence. Pretty soon she turned to me and asked about one of the moves I made earlier that knocked her flat, and I knew the heaviest part of the conversation was over.

Her shift in conversation was her way of saying that it was enough for now. I still had things to figure out, but I felt better than I had in months.

After our soul-searching, our conversation ranged from all sorts of teenage girl topics. The one we were currently discussing was which nation had the easiest clothes to fight in.

Water Tribe, obviously. This made Suki rant for a while about the traditional clothing of the Kyoshi warriors and how each piece had a purpose to which I said they looked too heavy for me to ever get used to, which led to a rousing conclusion that if we were being honest, Fire Nation clothes allowed for the greatest range of motion.

It was very shortly after this that we were startled by loud knocking, followed by my brother’s voice.

“Suki! I know you said you needed to girl talk with my sister, which is fine since she’s been mopey and kinda creepy all winter,” I shout an indignant _hey_ at that, which didn’t faze him "BUT, It is the middle of the night and I have no pillows or blankets and I’ve been trying to sleep in my parka for the past hour but it is freezing!”

Me and Suki look at each other and bust out laughing.

“You didn’t leave him anything?” I asked.

“I am a Kyoshi warrior, Katara. I do nothing halfway; if I make a pillow fort, it will be made completely and expertly."

Sokka banged on the door again.

“Love is sacrifice.” I said, which made Suki laugh so hard, she cried.

“HEY! I CAN HEAR YOU LAUGHING IN THERE” Sokka was yelling again.

“Should we let him into our fort?” I asked.

“You may regret that decision when the snoring starts,” Suki retorted.

I chuckled but bent the door to let him in. He was grumbling and huffing to himself about being tag teamed, but Suki coaxed him into the fort where it was warm and cozy, and he fell asleep almost instantly. Suki and I rolled our eyes but laid down on either side of him.

It was hot and cramped and pretty loud from Sokka’s snoring, but when I closed my eyes, I saw no figures in the snow and heard no voices in my head. Suki promised me it was safe in here and I wondered blearily if her words put some kind of spell on our little fort.

“Suki?” I whispered.

“Hm?”

“How are _you_ healing?”

I couldn’t see in the dark, but I felt like I heard a smile in her voice.

“Like this.” And I didn’t know if _this_ was referring to how monumental it felt to talk to someone who had been through the same things you have, or if _this_ was referring to how strangely comforting it was to listen to the snoring of someone you loved or if _this_ was simply referring to living because we _were_ alive and we _were_ together and really, that was sort of all that mattered.

It felt strange. We hadn’t slept on the ground since before the war ended, but laying side by side like we were still refugees on the run didn’t feel like a step backwards.

It felt like home.

Without another thought, I fell asleep beside my ridiculously loud brother and ferociously big-hearted sister.

When I woke up in the morning, feeling inexplicably calm and well-rested, I found an empty space on my ice wall and bent my latest adventure: a pillow fort.

Then I wrote a long overdue letter.

  
  
  


The rest of the winter passed with marginally less angst than the beginning.

Things were different after the night in the fort.

I wasn’t magically fixed because things were not that simple; the voices still came to me, and the ache still throbbed. Nightmares still haunted my sleep and my energy still rushed out of me at times, icy and frigid. 

_Growing pains_ , I thought. 

The difference came in the way I would say yes when Suki asked me to spar, and the way she wouldn’t hold back, and the way she would look at me with understanding when I stared through her, miles away.

It was in the way I finally told Pakku what was happening with my bending and the way he offered to practice with me and the way he told me he had no doubts that I would figure it out because I was the strongest student he ever taught.

It was the way I spent more time at Sokka’s, and the way I laughed at his jokes and made them back, and the way I let him give me meat because it’s “good for the soul.”

It was the way I hugged Gran-Gran more and the way we would have quiet conversations over tea, and the way she told me she had seen many warriors come and go and knew I couldn’t stay in the South forever.

( _You’re miles away, aren’t you?)_

I think Suki would get along here just fine.

Spring was approaching quickly, and I had to make up my mind about where I wanted to go next. Pakku recommended the North, saying I could go to the Spirit Oasis, which I seriously considered, but it didn’t feel right. Not yet, at least. I thought about writing to Aang, because who was better to help me with my spirit _and_ my bending, but when I sat down to write to him, it didn’t feel right, either.  
 _Not yet_.

The answer didn't come to me until I was staring at my ice wall. I was taking in my friends and adventures that I froze in time, feeling slightly ridiculous at how much I would miss it, when my eyes fell on one of the first figures I ever carved.

 _Aha_ resounded so strongly in my mind, I actually slapped my forehead with my palm. _How didn’t I think of this sooner?_

I wince momentarily at the thought of having to tell Sokka where to drop me off. He would not be happy, but as I trace the roots and branches and canopy of my carving, I get an overwhelming sense of rightness.

It was a banyan-grove tree.

It was time to go back to Foggy Swamp.

( _A pathetic people for a pathetic girl_ , Hama taunts.).

( _Congratulations, peasant, you picked the one place that will make me miss this place_ , Azula mocks).

( _I miss the trees_ , Jet sounds forlorn).

I sigh heavily and silently correct myself.

It was time to face my ghosts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I HAVE A COMPANION PIECE. It's the letter Katara wrote Zuko that I actually wrote for Zutara Week Day 5: Hesitancy. The general feeling of that letter inspired how I wanted this fic to feel and read, so I edited it a little and uploaded it. It's called Hesitancy. Check it out if you're interested.  
> I really think Suki and Katara would have had a beautiful friendhsip because they have always seemed so similar to me. Both are warriors and both are on the girly side, and I defdinitely think they would have been good friends! For the love of God, we love Sokka, but you know the two of them would tag team him ALL DAY.


	3. Spring

_Katara._

_It was clear as day. It carried on the wind and ruffled the leaves and blew by me with the slight smell of water lotuses._

_Katara, Katara, Katara._

_It caressed my skin and mussed my hair and kissed my sun-freckles._

_The swamp had been waiting for me. It almost shivered at my footsteps and held its breath as I worked up the courage to step into its moss and muck. It seemed to let a sigh loose as soon as I stepped off the beaten path, climbing over huge trunks and pushing leaves and vines out of my way._

_I didn’t have a destination I was heading towards or a place in my mind’s eye of where I wanted to go, but it didn’t matter._

_My fate was in the hands of the chirping crickets and twisted branches and canopied shadow of the banyan-grove tree._

* * *

Sokka was not happy.

I called it long before we ever left, but the closer to Foggy Swamp we got, the more he gave me side eyes and small frowns. I don’t think he ever forgave the swamp for what it showed him, and he wasn’t thrilled about leaving me here alone. He tried to talk me out of it, but after several arguments, he gave up his protests and resigned himself to silent judgment instead. It didn’t help that my birthday was in a little over a month, and I was planning on spending it with swampbenders and catgators and spirits.

I didn’t really understand me either.

Travelling through the Earth Kingdom in the springtime gave me a new perspective on the season altogether. I had missed out on its comings and goings for most of my life and had only recently felt an appreciation. I was used to my eternal winter, where things tended to wither in the cold. I ventured to the Fire Nation in the summer but only the tenacious foliage could survive the extreme heat.

(And tenacious waterbenders at that.)

Spring, in my opinion, was highly underrated.

It came quietly, bringing things like gentle breezes and floral smells and warm rain. It revived the more fragile plants I rarely got the opportunity to see. The world was waking up, and I wanted to greet it all: the river lilacs that were crushed into tea and the fuzzy moss that tickled my skin and the earthy scent of fresh dirt that was just beginning to turn over on itself.

I decided there was a delicacy about it, a timidity, and if it wasn’t obvious by now, I had a bit of a soft spot for the shy side of life. (I’m thinking of hand-holding, of blushing in meetings, of private smiles, and of unspoken conversations).

That being said, spring in Foggy Swamp was a different being altogether.

The heat was the first thing I noticed. It was different than Fire Nation heat-not as dry or arid but sticky and humid. I felt water everywhere; in the air, in the ground, in the wildlife, and it called out to me and clung to me like a coating. They flora and fauna were resilient and camouflaged and melted into the swamp. 

Our arrival was met with hugs and backslapping and vague explanations for wanting a ‘change in scenery.’

Sokka and Suki didn’t stay long, and Sokka asked me one more time if I was sure about staying ( _Kyoshi has more than giant flies to eat, baby sis_ ). He was worried, I could tell, but I told him I’d see him in a few weeks, which satisfied him enough to leave.

Telling Suki goodbye involved blinking eyes and a bone-crushing hug. We didn’t say much, but we were warriors, after all, and we were used to silent goodbyes. The time we spent together allowed for us to communicate just as well without words anyway.

_(It’s okay to lean on other people, Katara)._

I think it might be possible to be tethered to more than one person.

(There are many different types of knots that bind, aren’t there?)

* * *

Everything the people did in Foggy had a purpose even if it wasn’t clear. In the South, hunting and cooking and building and mending were all obvious and industrious chores that fulfilled our community. In the Swamp, their industry came from diving to find herbs and bending moss into canopies to form shelter and racing restless catgators to settle them down.

Their way of life held a lot of freedom. More freedom than I ever saw in the North and even more than what I was used to in the South. Foggy Swamp seemed to run on its own timetable completely. There was no beginning or end to the things you could do or not do. Everyone chose what they wanted to do. That’s not to say there wasn’t a structure. It wasn’t the kind of place that required rules or urgency; they lived according to the direction the swamp pointed them in.

The people were organs and limbs, moving and breathing by the inhales and exhales of the banyan-grove tree.

I had wondered months ago about the memory of a courtyard.  
I think Foggy Swamp had a memory, too. As soon as we arrived, something shifted within me.

The voices quieted down completely.

They weren’t gone, just hushed. The swamp seemed to take them away, standing ready to release them when I dared to venture out alone.

It was a spiritual place, and it was waiting on me.

  
So I took my time.

In the first two weeks, my days went a lot like this: wake up whenever I wanted, practice my bending, help in the healing hut until lunch, and then dive into marshes or hunt for flies or bend vines into curtains or soak up the sun just for the pleasure of it.

One of the only constants was their healer, a woman named Rue, who was the main reason I found myself going back time and again to the healing hut. She was around my father’s age, and I found a kinship with her immediately. She looked like the swampbenders with her leafy green clothing and dark brown eyes; her hair tied back with various flowers and grasses, but she reminded me more of Earthbenders- someone steady and no-nonsense. 

She was also an amazing healer. She worked quickly and efficiently and tended to gashing wounds and infected cuts with a quickness and effectiveness I had never seen before.

Accidents were fairly common in Foggy Swamp, so there was no shortage of injured parties to treat. ( _The hazards they risk in order to live a life without fear_ , Rue told me).

She asked me all sorts of things about the Poles and travelling with the Avatar and even the politics I had been briefly involved with in the Fire Nation. I found it relaxing to eat fish and strange jerkies with her in the same way I would sip tea with Gran. She had taken to calling me _Bluebell_.   
When I asked what that meant, she only laughed. 

* * *

Nights in the Swamp were spent around a campfire. They drank a concoction of their own that they called moonshine.   
(It was more dangerous than the heady spice of Fire Nation wine.)

Storytelling seemed to be universal and living in the swamp meant seeing all kinds of things most people never should. Talking animals and ghosts and shadows of spirits were commonalities among their tales.

Tho even said Koh himself had been seen roaming the tree tops and wetlands from time to time. Due said that was a lie, but Tho said the clacking noise heard some nights couldn’t be made by any bug they had ever eaten.

(I drank a lot of moonshine that night.)

* * *

The swamp called to something wild in me that overpassed the responsible nature I grew into from childhood. I dove from the tops of tree branches and rode catgators with a recklessness I hadn’t felt in a while.

Foggy Swamp was waking _me_ up and greeting _me_ instead.

That being said, I didn’t come to play, and the Swamp knew.

After those first two weeks, my nights became restless. I started to hear things. It wasn’t voices or wind or even the dreaded clacking, but it was almost like breathing, right beneath my ear.

It was like the Swamp itself was telling me it was time for me to introduce myself.

My nights were spent listening to the earth breathe deeply and sigh my name.

Sleeping became impossible. I either couldn't fall asleep at all or had strange dreams. Things like blue cherries on trees and red snow and fields of black flowers. I opted to stay awake.

Rue noticed when I kept falling asleep during lunch and offered to show me where she goes when she can’t sleep. 

( _You think you’re the first voyager Foggy's kept awake, bluebell?)_

She showed me a path behind the healing hut that trailed deep into the brush and let out into a clearing that was strangely illuminated. At first I thought there were torches somewhere, but then my jaw dropped.

They looked like dragonflies, except they were huge.

“Dragonflies are native to the Fire Nation,” Rue explained, seeming to read my mind. “There’s more dragon than firefly in them, so they can’t leave all that sun.”

I couldn’t get a very close look, but these almost looked like glowing, floating rocks.

They had wings that lit up like lanterns, glinting on and off lazily, but I couldn’t figure out what exactly I was seeing.

“Turtleflies came first, though.” _Oh_.

  
They were hiding in their shells.

“They aren’t real smart,” Rue continued, “They stay in their shells most of the time like scaredy catgators, so they bump into each other a lot.” I realized as she said it, there was a subtle thumping noise when they ran into each other. They floated more than flew, gliding along slowly, occasionally bumping shells, as unhurried as the Swamp they lived in.

“We call them lightning turtles here.” I sighed. _Lightning turtles_. Of course.

“They light up a trail as far as you can see down that way,” Rue pointed down the muddy path.

“I figure when you get around to finding whatever it is you’re looking for, this would be a good place to start.” She said at last.

I looked at her in surprise, but she just watched the turtles with an impassive expression. I sighed again.

“How did you know?”

She laughed at that.

“When people want a ‘change of scenery,’ they go to Ba Sing Se, bluebell, not Foggy.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

“Want a tip?” she looked at me sideways. I raised my eyebrows.

“There’s a spring solstice coming up. Wait until then. I got a feeling what you’re hunting out here is only gonna want to be found once.” A hint of a memory came to me, something someone said years ago when Aang helped Hei Bai. The lines between the spirit world and our world get fuzzy. I shivered a little at the thought but figured she was right. I didn’t want to face my demons down again.

When I asked her the date, I nearly laughed out loud.

It was on my birthday. And why wouldn’t it be? I thought about Zuko’s destiny thing again.  
I have _got_ to pay better attention to his uncle’s proverbs.

“Do me a favor, bluebell” she turned to me, looking as serious as I had ever seen her.

“Before you go off in the Swamp, promise you’ll come see me first.”   
It was her fear that made me agree.

* * *

My birthday was approaching quickly. I had about a week left before the solstice. 

My bending started to get more sporadic. Not even the Swamp could help that.

Having explosions of swampbending was easy to play off. Swampbenders often practiced their bending in experimental moves, so my outbursts went mostly unnoticed.

Instead of ice daggers and frozen water, the bursts came in whipping vines around branches and blasting humid air into mini hurricanes. 

I spent nearly every night with the lightning turtles. Sometimes Rue would come, trying to entertain me with stories I hadn’t heard. Other times, she’d leave me be, seeming to understand the need I had to sit and think about what was waiting for me.

A few days before my birthday, I received a letter from Sokka and Suki. They wished me a Happy Birthday, saying they hoped the letter reached me in time and that I could keep Hawky with me until I was ready to leave.

I might’ve cried if I did that anymore.

That feeling left swiftly when I found out they sent a letter to the Swamp people letting them know when my birthday was.

“Cuz! You should’ve told us your birthday was coming! Don’t you know it’s tradition for you to get your own catgator?” Tho said. I hoped he was joking.

“Yeah, we’ll have to make-do with the time we got left to give you a right proper Swamp Birthday.” Due said.

“Yeah,” Tho continued. “Forget the catgator. You gotta go cattail clawing. It's usually when you're 18, but 17 is close enough to me.”

“It ain’t 18, it’s 16.” Due corrected.

“Not it aint, it’s 18, I remember” Tho said.

“I doubt your memory goes that far back, Tho,” Due said, “it’s 16 for sure.”

“I am telling you, it’s 18.”

They started arguing back and forth in a way that reminded me of Sokka and I. I turned to Ruewith eyebrows raised.

“The age doesn’t matter so much,” Rue spoke over them with a little sigh. “it depends more on the person. In the Swamp, when someone proves they're all grown-up, they _used_ to do something called cattail clawing.” She emphasized the past-tense and gave Tho and Due a pointed look. 

“It’s an old Foggy tradition of showing that you're ready to move past childhood " She looked at me then. “You got anything like that in the South?”

“I guess ice dodging would be the closest thing.” I said after thinking for a moment. 

“So what do you do?” I asked a little hesitantly.

“Oh, it ain’t been done in years,” Rue said, "and for good reason," she gave another look at Tho and Due, who were still arguing, “but you dive down to the bottom of the swampbed and pull one of them cattails up by the root.”

I must’ve looked a little miffed because she explained more fully.

“Cattails are symbolic for inner peace. If you can yank one up, it usually means you can balance your mind, body, and spirit. It's like all the pieces of you are coming together.”

“Yeah, they’re near impossible to yank up. I reckon we haven’t had anyone try in decades now.” Tho chimed in.

“Yeah, we used to have problems with people passing out. Huu would have to pick ‘em out fast.” Due said.

“Couldn’t most of them use bending to get out?” I wondered.

“Oh, no bending for cattail clawing. That’s cheating. It’s gotta be even for benders and non-benders.”

"And people nearly drowned trying on _several occasion_ s." Rue said with some finality. 

“So doing that proves to your people that someone is all grown up?”

“Its not about proving themselves to us,” Rue said. “It’s about proving to the Swamp you can let go and then proving to yourself you can move on.”

A throb I only felt these days when staring at lightning turtles reverberated through me at that.

“Like I said, no one’s done it in years.”

* * *

That night Rue came to sit with me by the lightning turtles.

“The spirits seem to have a sense of humor.”

I sighed heavily. 

“I couldn’t agree more.”

* * *

The day before my birthday was when it happened.

I had just left Rue in the healing hut when I heard an ear-piercing scream.

I ran back to find nearly everyone in a circle and several swampbenders shouting between each other. I managed to shove my way to the front lines to see what was going on.

A catgator seemed to be sick, foaming at the mouth and growling at a little girl in a slow approach. The poor girl couldn’t have been more than 4 years old, and she was sitting with her knees pulled up in a pitiful defense, completely petrified.

“We gon have to restrain it with vines,”

“Nah, any sudden moves it could swallow her whole,”

“-have to do something”

“Could go snatch her-,”

“-don’t want to scare it”

Several things were being shouted at once when the catgator gave a particularly nasty snarl and started getting closer. Several people threw themselves in the circle to distract the catgator when out of nowhere, it just stopped.

The gator very awkwardly rolled onto its back and went still. I would’ve thought it somehow died if it wasn’t for the snarling coming from it. The girl’s mother took the opportunity to snatch her up while several benders wrapped layers of thick vines around it.

I had gone still, feeling my stomach churn. I had seen submission like that before. I had _demanded_ submission like that before. All of the benders I recognized were currently wrapping the gator in vines, so I stepped out of the circle and took a look around.

Right by the thick shrubbery of woods, directly by the spot that led to the lightning turtles, Rue stood in a horribly familiar stance.

She was bloodbending.

I gaped a little at her. She seemed to feel my stare and gave me a look of pure surprise. She straightened immediately and dropped the stance, taking a couple steps towards me with a questioning look on her face.

I took off.

I ran as far as I could in the direction of the marshes and propelled myself to the tree tops with swamp water.   
  


I was hyperventilating.

She was a _healer_. She was my _friend_.

I felt sick. I thought bloodbending began with Hama and would end with me. I realize now that was foolish and immature. _Naive_. I hadn't considered myself naive since before the war. At the thought of Hama, I almost began shaking. I half-expected her to cackle or taunt my weakness, but the Foggy Swamp spell shut her out. Were there other bloodbenders out there? Were they teaching people? Did Rue somehow know Hama or were people coming up with this on their own?

I didn’t know which direction of thought made me feel worse.

Once my shock and disgust wore off, I felt angry. Betrayed.

She healed her own people. She treated me like a friend and she was hiding this?

Were they all hiding this? I had never seen any of them use it before. They didn’t in the war. I couldn’t imagine Tho and Due using it, and Huu protected the swamp; I doubt he’d practice anything that could constrict its creatures. Was she the only one? Did her own people not even know?

I felt the vines twist and snap at each other like snakes underneath my fingers.

I needed answers.

I waited in trees until dark and took off to where I knew she would be waiting.

“How could you?” I demanded. Confrontation seemed wrong in the soft light the turtles put off.  
  
“How could I what?” she almost sounded bored.

It made me livid.  
  
“You know what.” She turned to look at me now.  
  
“Save that girl's life? Control the catgator?” she almost looked irritated.

“Easily.”

  
I narrowed my eyes at her attitude.  
“It’s wrong. That kind of bending is…” I floundered as I tried to think of a word, “evil. How can you do it?”

She was staring at me firmly.  
“How isn’t the question you really want to ask me, is it?”

I knew what she was getting at.  
  
“Who?” I asked quietly. I needed to know who taught her how to do it. I needed to know. I thought of Hama, of possible spawns of her, of young, sad girls who could be more impressionable, more easily swayed.  
  
“My mother.” I balked.

“She taught you?” Rue nodded.  
  
“This is...sick. What, it’s just passed along like a family heirloom? Something you take out and show off like old plates and beadwork?”  
She was still looking at me firmly, cocking her head slightly like she was attempting to figure something out.

  
“You do not have to agree with me or trust me again, but I think you need to listen to what I have to say.”  
  
“I need to?” I nearly screeched  
  
“Yes. You need to hear this.” She emphasized need.  
  
“I don’t need anything from you. I just want to know who all knows. Do your own people even know? Have you been lying to them as well as me?”  
  
“I haven’t been lying. You’re just the first person whose asked.” So the people of Foggy Swamp didn’t know.  
  
“You haven’t shown anyone how to do it?” I held my breath.  
  
“If you want me to answer your questions, you need to listen to me first.”  
  
“Why should I? I could out you to them right now. Something tells me their philosophy won’t like you controlling people’s blood.”

  
She looked mad for the first time.

  
“They control vines, do they not? The plants are just as alive as people. Is water running through the core of their stems not the same as blood pumping through our bodies?  
You don’t see it, do you? Just because they’re not humans? People you _see_ and _know_ and _love_? Plants love too, bluebell, just not in the way you do."

I didn’t know what to say to that.

"Will you listen?” She said it insistently. 

  
“Why?” Agreeing to listen felt like I was losing something. I didn’t want to lose anymore. I thought I had just begun to win things back. 

She gave me a gentler look.  
  
“Because someone taught you wrong. It’s made you hide away. I think if you don’t listen to what I have to say now, you may bury yourself alive completely.”  
  
Again, I had nothing to say.   
  
"Will you listen?” she asked one more time.

This felt like a turning point. I could choose one way or another, but I’d be changed no matter what. I didn’t have voices to give their opinions now.

Wasn’t I brave?

I chose with a single nod.

  
She gave me a look and took a deep breath.   
  
“You knew a waterbender then?” She asked. “Someone who taught you how to bend blood?”

I said nothing. She nodded to herself.   
  
“It was a woman, I assume?” I reared back a little and furrowed my brow, anxiety creeping in. I opened and closed my mouth several times, but it must have been answer enough because she continued.   
  
“I think women have always been more connected to blood. We pass our own life blood on to babies, we shed it once a month,” she paused to give me a pointed look, “and we are usually the ones cleaning it up. Whether on wounds or the battlefield or our own homes, women aren’t strangers to blood.” She gave a humorless laugh.

“It’s funny how men think we would pass out in the face of it. They can strike the blows but fall apart at the aftermath.” She gave me another look.   
“Women aren’t squeamish, are they?”

It was a question that didn’t require an answer.  
  
“My mother lived in the woods of an Earth Kingdom village. It’s long been abandoned now, but she was revered among its people for her healing abilities. She could heal diseases that would take months with waterbending in just a matter of days. Do you know how?” She waited for me to put it together.   
  
“Their blood,” I nearly whispered. And then it made sense. Rue’s abilities and quickness. She used blood to heal.   
  
“Yes. She taught me how when I was several years younger than you. It’s delicate work. Powerful work. You hold peoples lives in your hands. I started with healing animals until she let me practice on others." She took another breath, almost like she was getting her nerve up. 

"When I turned 16, she took me out on the night of the full moon, and she taught me a very important lesson.”  
  
She paused in order to pull something out of her waistband.  
It was a Fire Nation knife. I instinctually tensed defensively, but she wasn’t even looking at me.

  
( _You’re miles away, aren’t you?_ )

  
The knife was older. That much was clear by the style. It was big, with a beaded handle, obviously belonging to someone in power. It nearly resembled a machete. The newer ones were sleeker, smaller, not as heavy.  
  
“She sliced my arm open with it.” Rue said suddenly. She unrolled some of the leaf bindings on her upper arm to reveal a large and jagged scar. I couldn’t help my gasp. It was a deep cut.  
  
“Your mother did that?” I couldn’t hide my horror.   
  
She gave me a sad smile.

”That’s not all. She took control of my body, something she told me should _never_ be done. All I could do was stand still and bleed out. She told me I would pass out soon but that I wouldn’t die. She told me she’d be gone when I woke up, and I needed to know the final lesson about bloodbending.” She glanced at me.  
“I imagine it’s a lesson you learned, bluebell.”  
  
“How it feels.” I said, remembering the sensation of logged limbs.   
  
“Yes. She told me if I was ever to use it on another person then I needed to know what it felt like myself- to not have control of my own body, to be completely vulnerable to the mind and hands of another person.”

It was a harsh lesson a mother could teach her daughter, but I learned a lesson just as harsh from mine. Maybe it was the nature of mothers and daughters.

No. Women aren’t squeamish.   
  
“And your mother?” I asked. Rue sighed.   
  
“If I had to guess, she was taken for doing whatever it was to that fire nation soldier.”

I gave her a questioning look.   
  
“Waterbenders don’t just _find_ fire nation daggers.”

She had a point.   
  
“Couldn’t she have fought back?”  
Rue laughed a little.  
“She was a strong woman, but she was a healer at heart. She didn’t like to fight. I think she was trying to protect me, too. She didn’t want to draw too much attention to our village. I fled here after that. I heard the stories about finding lost loved ones among the weeds.” She gave me a deadpan expression. “Most of all that is myth, mind you. These are good people, though.”

“Have you taught anyone else?” I asked, holding my breath a little. 

She didn’t look at me when she answered.

”No. Those aren’t the kind of lessons I want to teach.” 

“Then why are you telling me all this?”

She looked at me again.   
  
“Because you need to know that bending isn’t evil, Katara. People can use it for evil, but it’s like my mother used to say.  
We have to trust in what the Spirits let us do.”  
  
( _Do you think I’ve been a good Avatar?_ ) 

  
“Sometimes I think the spirits are too trusting.”  
  
She gave me a sideways expression. I hadn’t meant to say it out loud.   
“Maybe so.” She shook her head a little.   
“But I didn’t feel that way when I saved that little girl’s life.”

I sighed.   
  
“I’m not trying to convince you one way or another, bluebell, but there’s a light and a dark to everything. Something tells me that’s another lesson you’ve learned.” 

Ah yes, _balance_.   
  
She didn’t stick around for my answer. She got up, leaving me alone with the turtles that made me ache.

How do I reconcile the lessons I learned in the war with the ones I was learning now?

I looked across the lit path and listened to the small bumps made from the turtles.

“Do you know?” I whispered to the Swamp. It said nothing back.

The answer was as muddy as the water I was looking in.

* * *

My birthday came the next day and brought a variety of Foggy Swamp traditions and a rare appearance from Huu.

I was surprised, but he said he never passed up a party.

Swamp birthday traditions included standing on top of a large branch and maintain balance while dodging vines being swung at you. (Just as hard as it sounds and surprisingly fun), wrangling catgators (much harder than it sounds and not fun at all), and in general, doing whatever it is you felt like doing for the whole day. They took their birthdays seriously in the Swamp. It wasn’t a dinner or a two-hour party, it was an all day affair.

There was music and dancing and lounging and bending and drinking.

Rue was noticeably missing. 

I tried not to let that bother me, but I knew she was giving me space.

It didn’t necessarily matter. It was the day of the solstice, and I made her a promise.

The festivities were not enough to distract me although Huu actually gave me a present that he said was from all of them. 

It was a new waterskin, fortified with a degree of beautiful swamp plants; cardinals and ferns and water-lilies and honey-bells and hyacinth. It was a collage of green and brown, white and yellow, purple and red. It was flexible and durable. The flowers chosen thrived in water, and Huu said he bent them all together himself.

I was unbelievably touched.

When nighttime came, we all sat around the campfire and told stories like always.

I was on edge, though. 

Every time there was a pause in between stories, I swear I could hear clacking. 

* * *

Once everyone was either asleep or passed out from moonshine, I found Rue in the healing hut.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

“I keep my promises.”

She nodded at that and moved to retrieve something from the back.

She came back holding the knife.

I only looked at her.

“You’ll know when you need it.”

* * *

_Katara._

It was clear as day. It carried on the wind and ruffled the leaves and blew by me with the slight smell of water lotuses.

_Katara, Katara, Katara._

It caressed my skin and mussed my hair and kissed my sun-freckles.

The swamp had been waiting for me. It almost shivered at my footsteps and held its breath as I worked up the courage to step into its moss and muck. It seemed to let a sigh loose as soon as I stepped off the beaten path, climbing over huge trunks and pushing leaves and vines out of my way.

I didn’t have a destination I was heading towards or a place in my mind’s eye of where I wanted to go, but it didn’t matter.

My fate was in the hands of the chirping crickets and twisted branches and canopied shadow of the banyan-grove tree.

I stepped out, one foot in front of the other, following the lightning trail deep into the heartland of the swamp.   
  


They faded eventually until I only had the light of the moon to guide me, and I started walking a little aimlessly.  
I did my part. I came out of my shell.   
The rest would be up to the Swamp.

* * *

I saw him first. I wasn’t expecting it, but that’s not saying much when it comes to this place. 

He took me by surprise. (That shouldn’t come as a shock; that was more or less how we met). 

He stood leaning back against one of the large, expansive roots that seemed to have no beginning or end. 

He looked completely at home within the forest, even a swampy one, and he was chewing on some kind of grass I didn’t recognize. I vaguely wondered where in the spirit world he would’ve even gotten it. 

My heart seized up a little at seeing him again after all this time. 

He looked exactly the same; the smirk was unmistakable. 

He spoke first.

“Hey.” I could’ve laughed.

“Hi.” 

His smirk almost morphed into a real smile, and he cocked his head to the side. 

“You’re a long way from home.” 

The familiar pang twitched at that. 

“So are you.”

He faltered, and we looked at each other, like we had all that time ago, in the same homesick way.

( _You're angry at them, too_ ). 

He caught himself and smirked again. 

“Do you mean the treehouse or the land of the living?” I frowned a little at that. 

I reached a hand out hesitantly, wondering if it was even possible to touch him or if he’d slip away. I brought my hand to his shoulder, and it felt the same as I remembered.  
Solid, wiry, strong. I sighed. 

“Was your treehouse home?” I wasn’t expecting a response. 

He just gave me a look. 

“Where have you been?” I asked him instead.

“You know, I’m not quite sure.”

“Is it the spirit world?”

He actually rolled his eyes. 

"No such thing."

I balked at that and gestured up and down, intending to demonstrate the fact he was standing right in front of me disproved that. He didn't look impressed. 

“You know I never really believed in all that stuff." I didn't know that. "I wander around some strange forests mostly. Stranger than this one,” he gestures around the Swamp. “If that’s the spirit world, I was expecting more, or maybe worse. It’s not what I had in mind of where I’d end up.”

The insides twitched.

“What did you have in mind?”

He gave me a different kind of look. Apathetic. It scared me more than the anger.

“At the better times, I thought there would be nothing, I guess. And at the worst, I imagined one big fire.” 

I raised both my hands to his shoulders, to steady myself, or maybe him. 

“Oh, Jet.” I wasn’t sure if it was the darkness of the swamp, but his skin was looking almost gray. I dug my fingers into his shoulders. I didn’t want him to fade away before I was ready. 

“Is that why I’m here?.” He asked. He made a tsk noise. “Don’t tell me you’ve blamed yourself, Katara.”

I said nothing. I only clung to him like a lifeline. 

He sighed. 

  
“Where is here anyway?” He asked.

”Foggy Swamp.” I answered with a little shrug.

He raised his eyebrows. 

"It's a," I thought for a moment, "spiritual place." I ignored his scoff. "It's a place that shows us people we've lost." I gulped and before I lost my nerve added quickly, "and loved." 

I stared at my hands on his shoulders for a while before finally looking up at him. At least he wasn't smirking. He was looking at me sadly, and his eyes were flashing brown and grey strangely. 

“You’re determined to save me, aren’t you?” He was definitely gray. I was clutching him even harder, determined to keep him. "I'm surprised you even care that much. You hated me."

I reared back sharply, giving him a harsh look. "You broke my trust and tried to murder innocent people, but I didn't want you to die!" My outburst seemed to revive him a little. Some of his color came back.

"You of all people know what the Fire Nation takes away. I thought you understood! They are murderers. Every last one." _There!_ my brain seemed to shout in an almost aha moment. That right there is why it would've never worked out. I wanted to argue and yell and _feel_ this hurt, but he was a ghost. He wouldn't understand now, not when the war took everything he had to give, including his life. 

"You're wrong," I said at last, softly but firm. I pleaded with my eyes. _Truce_ I was trying to say. ( _Polar lights have some red in them, too_ ). 

He gave a small noise of frustration. "I just wanted you to understand."

"I know."

( _War crimes come in all shapes and sizes.)_

“It shouldn’t have happened that way.” I said. My voice cracked, but I didn’t cry. My body knew better. I didn’t have to explain for him to know what I meant. 

“But it did.” He was looking at me now in a way he hadn’t since a red forest and a treehouse. Something tender and guarded.   
  


It opened the floodgates of everything I had wanted to say since Ba Sing Se.

“I could’ve tried harder. I could’ve stayed longer and not trusted what you said. You don’t have the best track record for the truth, you know? Not even when we met you, but that’s not really the point. I should’ve known better. I should’ve pushed deeper. Jet, I’m sorr-“ 

I was suddenly cutoff when he gripped my waist and pulled me to him.  
He kissed me.

He kissed me with the firmness and desperation I hadn’t experienced in a long time. My hands were still on his shoulders, and they ended up in his hair. He had me flush against him, moving his mouth against mine with more eagerness than a spirit should be capable of.  
He was trying to tell me it wasn’t my fault. He was trying to tell me he didn’t blame me. He was trying to tell me I needed to stop feeling guilty.

I was trying to tell him I was sorry anyway. I was sorry it happened to him. I was sorry we couldn’t do more. I was sorry he was still alone. 

We broke apart with a gasp. 

Message received. 

I untangled my hands from his hair, and he let me go, but I didn’t step back.

He was smirking infuriatingly again. 

“So, you really loved me, huh?” I wanted to roll my eyes or scoff at him or even lie, but instead I said, 

“You were my first love.” 

He looked thoughtful at that. 

“I don’t think anyone’s ever loved me like you did.”

“Your freedom fighters loved you.”

“As a leader, maybe, but not like you.”

I resisted the urge to touch him again. 

“They loved you like family, Jet. I saw it.”

“Regardless.” he said with a hardness reserved for fighting and ranting and flying through trees. 

“Not like you.” 

I choked on an exhale. It hurt, but in the good way.

“It wasn’t enough to save you.” And I didn’t know if I meant his body under Lake Laogai, or if I meant his spirit in a red forest. How do you fix someone broken when you’re broken yourself? How do you give parts away when you’re missing them, too? If I had known, it might’ve made a difference, but the thing was, I was here in this swamp to put thoughts like that to rest. 

He smiled at me. I’d seen a smile like this before on a Different boy. Genuine and a little wistful. 

“Katara, I think we both know I never would’ve made it out of this war alive. It’s not in my nature.” He was bluffing again, and I thought it was kind of irritating that I had gotten good at picking up on it now when I could’ve used it before. 

He was trying to sound tough-a leader to the end. 

Maybe he wouldn’t have made it out alive; a calloused boy who only saw dust and ash and death.

But maybe he would’ve lived and maybe he could’ve come here and maybe he would’ve seen his parents and they could tell him there was more to him than just a one man army. 

I felt like he had an idea of what I was thinking cause he ruffled my hair a little. 

“I loved you too, you know. In my own way, which I know wasn’t enough for you either, but there were times when I wished it was.”

I wanted to cry again. (My heart thumped strangely though, almost like hiccups, almost like sobs.)

“We were too young” I offered him, which was true. We had no clue how to love each other. We had no one around to show us what it was supposed to look like. 

_Growing pains_. 

“We still are,” he said, and he was right. 

He’d never make it past 16 and what a combustible age that turned out to be.

I realized something.

“I’m older than you now.” I told him. He smiled at that but said nothing else, because after all, birthdays didn’t matter much to a spirit, but he held my hand like they did. 

He turned around, looking behind him like he heard his name. I thought wildly for a moment of Aang. 

He looked back at me, and I could see the color of his eyes, his hair, his clothes dimming. 

“I gotta go.” 

I nodded.

He turned to walk back towards the forest, but before stepping through, he turned back.

“Could the treehouse have been home to you?”

I took him in, brown eyes flickering in and out of focus, shaggy hair nearly the color of the moon.

I just smiled in response.

And with that, he was gone.

* * *

  
I paced back and forth in front of his office door. It had been almost 10 months since I had nursed the Fire Lord back to life from a lightning wound. It had been 9 months and three weeks since I had fallen in love with the Fire Lord. It had been 7 months since I left the Fire Lord and returned to the South heartbroken. It had been 2 months since receiving a private letter from the Fire Lord asking me what happened between us and also would I be attending the peace negotiations this spring. It had been about one month since I ignored the first half and responded to the Fire Lord that, yes, I would be attending. It had been about 2 weeks since I woke up surrounded by glaciers and icicles and daggers I conjured in my sleep from strange dreams about the Fire Lord. It had been about 24 hours since I arrived in the Fire Nation in a fit of dread and worry and profuse sweating for anticipation of seeing the Fire Lord. And it had been all of about 10 minutes since guards came to tell me said Fire Lord was sick and had cancelled all the meetings for today.  
  
I make a mental note to stop setting my time by Zuko.

( _It's a little traitorous to think so much about a Firebender when you're not planning to kill them_ , Jet said.)

He had been feeling particularly vocal this spring.   
  
I pace back and forth a few more times, working up the nerve to knock on the door.  
I was worried. I knew he wouldn’t cancel meetings for just any illness, and I could help. That being said, if it was so bad, he’d be in bed, not his office.  
I think he was ignoring me.  
There was only one way to find out.  
My hand hesitated for just a moment before I knocked. I realized it was shaking a little. I forced it still.  
  
“Come in.” A stuffy-sounding voice came from the other side.  
  
There’s a feeling you get when you haven’t seen someone important to you in a long time, something like a hollow that starts in your throat and travels through your chest and leaves a cavern in the pit of your stomach. I’ve had multiple caverns within me; a permanent one for mom, a war-long one for dad, a secret one for Jet, and small, ever-changing ones for my brother and friends that come and go like the seasons.  
  
There’s another one, however, a hidden one, a painful one, a throbbing one, a bloody one, a growing one, that I didn’t realize had dug itself so deep until I left the Fire Nation last fall. I had an alcove in my chest the size and shape of Zuko and it hummed and hissed whenever I thought his name. It was drafty like his palace and heated like his body and steady like his heartbeat.  
  
It’s strange how impossibly empty you can feel until someone steps off a warship, or waves at you from a sky bison, or passes down their necklace as if they know what it will mean to you, or yes, even tells you to come in with a scruffy voice.  
It fills me more than it should.  
I step in.  
  
When he looks up from his desk, the look he gives me makes me think I might fill him, too.  
  
He looks surprised, but he smiles, which is a good sign. He’s looking at me in that way he does. The way which makes me blush. We don’t say anything, but our actions usually speak for themselves.  
  
He stands up _I’m glad you’re here_  
I take a step forward _do you mean that_  
He cocks his head _you know that I do_  
I tuck my hair behind my ears _you know it’s complicated_  
  
I had to break our silence.  
  
“The guards told me you were sick. I wanted to see if I could...” I trailed off, gesturing with my hands.  
  
“It’s nothing serious,” he brushed it off. “But I cant stop sneezing. Some of the nobles will use it as an excuse to make me sound sickly.”  
He definitely sounded stuffy.  
Then he looked at me. I’d have blushed but he sneezed again.

"It's good to see you," he says simply but the weight of his expression makes it feel like a confession of sorts. 

"You too." I mirrored his expression. 

  
It would’ve been very dramatic had he not at that moment sneezed violently three times in a row.  
  
“ _Nothing serious_...” I muttered. I walked a little closer to him and uncorked my water skin.  
“May I?” I asked, hands raised.  
He nodded, bowing his head a little.  
I raised my glowing hands to his temple first. He seemed to be running hotter than normal, and I pushed my water to feel around for any sign of infection. His sinuses were stopped up and I did my best to soothe the irritation. He breathed a little sigh of relief at that. His throat seemed a little swollen, and I healed what I could. Overall, there wasn’t much to be done. It wasn’t an infection or virus or disease.  
  
The Fire Lord has hay fever.

  
I chuckled and lowered my arms. He raised his eyebrows.  
“Zuko, do you have allergies?” I asked. He seemed a little affronted and started to defend himself, saying that was ridiculous and Fire Lords couldn’t be allergic to things in their own country, but he sneezed twice halfway through his rant, which pretty much took away his bite.

  
“You haven’t lived here your whole life, you know. It’s not that uncommon.” He grumbled a little at that and tried to cover up a little cough.

His eyes were watery, too, scar and all, and I noticed his good eye had a bag under it.  
Without thinking, I reached my hand up to cup his cheek.  
It was a familiar gesture for us.  
He held his breath.  
We looked at each other for a beat. It was another wordless conversation.  
I ran my thumb under his bag. _Have you been sleeping_  
He shrugged a little. _As much as I can_  
I raise my eyebrows. _Fire Lords need their sleep, doofus._  
He touched the inside of my raised elbow with one hand. _I have a lot on my mind._  
I dropped my hand and took a step back.  
  
“I might be able to help you sleep. I can’t imagine it’s very comfortable with your nose stopped up.”  
He was looking at me very seriously.  
  
“Okay.” I could tell it wasn’t what he wanted to say. It made me babble more.  
  
“I mean if you want. I just thought it would help you get back to meetings faster.”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“I mean not that there’s a rush for that. Well, I mean, people are here from all over, but I think as a whole everyone’s pretty understanding.  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“You've never missed meetings before, so if you needed some time to catch up on sleep, it wouldn’t be a big deal.  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“Sinuses are hard to clear, so I can tell you the herbs you can use that’ll help you.”

( _You always babble when you're nervous_. Jet said.)   
  
I was out of control.  
And then he cleared his throat. He was fighting a smile. Or maybe just fighting a sneeze.  
He gave me a crooked smile. _I’ve missed you._  
I gave him one back. _Me too._  
  
He looked serious again. Not 'Fire Lord business' serious, but 'we need to talk' serious. I gulped. 

  
"You left last fall." He said it point blank, carefully trying to conceal whatever his intentions were in bringing it up. But he shifted from one foot to the other, and I knew what he really meant. _You left me last fall_.

"I remember." It sounded callous as I said it, but I clasped my hands together tightly. I hoped he could hear my own hidden inflection. _I had my reasons_

( _And your reasons are always best, aren’t they?_ Jet sneered a little)

"You didn’t say goodbye."

A pause. 

“I remember.”

He narrowed his eyes a little. _That’s how you want to play._

"After everything. The war, the Agni Kai, and," he stopped. "And... _after."_ I blushed again. _"_ You didn't say goodbye." He kept a blank look, but I knew he was hurt. I knew him. That was the problem.

( _You thought you knew me, but you were wrong before_ , Jet said).

I took a shaky breath. "My peopl-" I couldn't even finish my thought before he finished it for me. 

"Your people needed you." He said it in the same point blank tone. His expression remained unreadable. I knew what that meant. 

I only nodded.

"You know I used to think of the Fire nation as my people." I raised my eyebrows.

"And they are," He pinned me with a look, "but I can’t help but think of you and Sokka and Aang and Toph, too."

"Do you understand?" 

He straightened his shoulders. _I was your people_ , it said. 

( _Did you think of me as your people?_ Jet asked. _I always felt like yours more than anyone else’s_.)

I nearly groaned. 

"Yes.” I said simply

"Do you know why I’m telling you that?" I did, so I beat him to the punch before he said something that made me crumble. 

"I wouldn’t have left you if I wasn’t sure you would heal completely."

Apparently that was _not_ what he wanted to hear because he came alive, throwing his hands in the air, dropping his unreadable expression to look at me like I grew a second head. 

There was surprise there, but there was also that _something else_. Always that _something_ that just simmered underneath. 

"That’s not what this is about. I didn’t need you for th..didn’t it matter enough..wasn’t I import..I just..."

He started and stopped several sentences in frustration, but I got the gist. He thought I left because he didn't mean enough to me. How ironic. 

"I wanted you to say goodbye. Didn’t I deserve a goodbye? " he said at last.

( _You never say goodbye. Why do you think that is?_ Jet chimed.)

It was my turn to flounder.

"I couldn’t...not after all that..not when..." 

_Mai mai mai mai mai_ my head chanted at me. I couldn't speak. 

To my horror, I started to cry. I whirled away from him, hugging my arms around my body in a vain attempt to keep myself together. 

"Katara..." it was so soft, so gentle, it made the tears flow freely. I furiously wiped at them. 

"Why are you crying?" He sounded genuinely confused, like he couldn’t figure out what could possibly be so crushing. It made me angry. 

"Katara what’s wrong? You can tell me."

"I can’t" I managed. I had stopped crying but refused to face him. 

"Since when can’t you tell me things?" I could hear him step closer to me. I could feel him behind me, so close. It made me think of the balcony in his bedroom. Whispered conversations and secrets and private things I could never forget about him. Things piled up inside of me that I didn’t know what to do with now. 

What do you do with other people’s secrets?

( _Well, what did you do with mine?_ Jet questioned.)

"Why did you really leave?" he continued. 

I could almost feel him start to reach out, so I pivoted to his bookshelf. 

I said nothing. 

"Was it your bending?"

I said nothing. 

"Was it your family?"

I said nothing. 

"Was it me?"

I said nothing.

I could make out the sound of rain in the distance. _Spring showers_ , my brain thought lamely. 

"What changed? You were by my side for weeks and then you left without even telling me. You were...my best friend." Pesky tears were back, and he advanced towards me again when he heard me sniffle. 

He was practically pleading now, and I hated that I was doing it to him. 

He tugged on my sleeve. 

I turned to face him. He looked so tired. 

"Why did you leave me like that?"

( _Why did you leave me like that?_ Jet was pleading, too).

I couldn’t help it. I was a fighter. I was heartbroken. I kept falling foolishly for people who would never truly be mine.

"Its not like I didn’t leave you in good hands."

He looked a little confused, but I gave him a hard look, tears gone now, and he took a step back. 

We had another wordless conversation.

He tilted his head to the side. _Do you mean what I think you mean?_

I crossed my arms. _I said what I said._

Silent conversations weren’t enough for him this time.

"Katara, is there something you want to tell me?"

"Is there something you want to tell me?" I threw back at him. 

We said nothing. Both of us had squared our shoulders, refusing to be the first to break. 

( _You were always so proud, you know. It was one of the things I liked about you._ Jet was killing me.) 

I sighed. 

“I really do think you should try and get some sleep.” I offered this as a flimsy and transparent olive branch. 

He was a diplomat, however, and had had months to practice his skills in negotiating peace, so he took it. 

“I think I will.” He gestured a little to the door. It was a dismissal. This conversation was over. 

I could never seem to get my timing right. 

I nodded a little. 

I walked by him, and he surprised me by grabbing my hand before I could pass. I turned towards him, closer than we had been in months. He rubbed small circles on the back of my hand with his thumb, a gesture that made my breath hitch. 

Like I said, he had months to practice negotiating peace. He was much better at it than I was. 

"Are you gonna be here this time when I wake up?"

"Yes."

He let me go, and I walked out, pausing when I shut the door behind me to slump against it. 

( _You’re a terrible liar, you know? I could've taught you how to get better. But you left. You do that a lot_.) I groaned in frustration. 

It was never meant to be me. In this palace, in this role, in Zuko’s life. 

_Is there something you want to tell me?_

Unspoken confessions, unspoken conversations, and unspoken goodbyes don’t do much for you after all. 

We never seem to get anywhere. 

* * *

I felt a little weird after seeing Jet. I knew I wouldn't hear him anymore and tried to reconcile that in my mind. 

I wandered around a little, thinking about the logistics of being able to touch a ghost. To _kiss_ a ghost. I winced a little at that but figured it was the last kiss we never got. 

I walked without really seeing, lost in thought more than anything, when a flash of color caught my eye. 

I looked around and saw the back of someone.  
  
A woman with brown hair and blue robes.

 _Mom_.

I hadn't let myself hope to see her again, but she was here. I could possibly even touch her again. 

"Mom!" I shouted. 

She perked and then took off. Why is she running? 

"Mom!" I yelled again and started running after her, practically sprinting to keep up. The flashes of blue were the only things I could follow in the dark. 

When I finally caught up to her, we were in a clearing. She had her back facing me with her head tilted towards the sky. She looked like she was trying to bathe in the moonlight.  
The familiar blue robes looked smothering in the heat.  
I felt just as overwhelmed this time as I had the last time I was here.  
  
“Mom.” I said it quietly, exhaling the word more than saying it. She didn’t turn around.  
“Mom.” I said it a little louder. Her head straightened like she was listening, but she still didn’t move. I was starting to feel something desperate take root.  
“Mom, I’ve wanted to come ba-“  
I abruptly cut myself off when she turned around.

  
It wasn’t my mother.

  
She was definitely water tribe, and the stitching of her robes told me she was from the south.  
She was young, too; she couldn’t have been more than a few years older than I was. She looked vaguely familiar, but I was certain I had never seen her before. I couldn’t quite place her.  
She was smirking at me, but it had a bit of an edge and for some reason, that sent off a little warning in my head.  
  
“I’m sorry,” I started “I thought you were someone else.” Apologizing to a figment seemed a little ridiculous, but I felt a little awkward, like I had accidentally intruded in something personal, something meant for another person.  
Surely this wasn’t my ghost, right?  
Was there some other water tribe teenager walking around Foggy Swamp looking for ghosts? Unlikely.  
I desperately wanted to get away from that smile.  
Her eyes widened in a mocking glee.  
“Oh you mean you don’t recognize me?” That voice. Where had I heard that voice? I recognized it from somewhere, I’m sure, but it sounded wrong, like the pitch was off.  
“Have we...met before?” I asked feeling a little embarrassed. I was trying to rack my brain for the faces I saw in travel. _Where had I seen her?_  
  
And then she laughed.  
No, She cackled.  
  
My heart stuttered and my body broke out in a cold sweat, raising goosebumps on my exposed skin.  
No way.  
It couldn’t be.  
  
“Hama?” The word came out strangled.  
  
Not possible. It can’t be possible.  
  
“I’m disappointed, little bloodbender, I thought I had made an impression.”  
My heart pounded an uneven rhythm, adrenaline pumping in my veins, making me uncork my water pouch and get into a defensive stance.  
  
She cackled again.  
“I can’t bend, just so you know. I’ve tried.”  
She cocked her head, eyes so dark they looked predatory.

  
“Why are YOU here?” I forced my anger into my bones, steeling myself.

  
“Same as you. We have unfinished business, you and I.” She stood tall, glaring a little.

  
“No,” I said, feeling incredulous to the situation as whole “you were alive the last time I saw you. And much older.” I sneered the last part.  
She gave me a bored expression.

“This swamp is special, blood bender. Even if it’s people aren’t.” She have something that resembled a shrug, “You see what you see.”

I understood what she meant even as it made my skin crawl. I spent a lot of time thinking about Hama in her youth. I imagined her as someone formidable. She looked like much more of a threat even as a young spirit than the old lady I knew, but I recognized the look she had. The hardness of her eyes, the cold expression, the look of someone who stopped associating people with humanity.  
This would always be the woman who taught me to control the life blood of my friends.

“What happened to you?” I demanded. A question that I meant in many different ways.

Her hard glint practically sparkled at the questions.  
“You’ll think of it as the ultimate poetic justice.” She mocked.  
I waited.  
“I died in chains within a prison cell.”

I felt many things at once. The first, which made me feel a little ashamed, was relief. She haunted my days. Relief was followed by a rippling satisfaction that scared me. _She controlled you, your friends, innocent people. She could’ve killed them, she created this beastly practice. She tainted people’s blood. She tainted you._ The facts didn't stop my shame.  
I still felt an unnameable sadness, born of grief for a fellow southerner, a fellow woman, a fellow human, dying in a cage.

“Nothing to say, little puppet master?” My silence seemed to make her angry.

“Your legacy will die with you.” I said  
She laughed at that, that sickening laughter that made my skin crawl.

“You’re wrong about that. You’ve got the blood lust. You’re a bending vampire, Katara. I saw it in you the first time you bloodbent.”  
My hands curled into fists.

“That’s not true.” I said, and I was shaking, whether from anger or fear, I wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter. She saw.

“Oh, you’re trembling, bloodbender. You know I’m right, don’t you? You could be the most powerful waterbender of your time. Why are you fighting it?”

_(Sometimes I think the spirits are too trusting.)_

“Because it’s wrong! You’ve abused water bending!.”  
She took several steps towards me.  
“What do you think it means to be a waterbender, Katara? You think its only soothing and healing? It’s about change. And it’s time for you to be the change. Show people how ruthless we are. How powerful. Water can suffocate and crush and flood. Think of your mother. Show people how you’ve grown."

_(Go get your father.)_

We start to circle each other.

“You have no right to speak about my mother.”

She laughs.  
“Don’t I? Pathetic girl. Don’t you look for her everywhere? In your grandmother, in me, in that swamp healer? You’ve been trying to replace her your whole life!”

“You’re wrong!”  
I feel the humidity around me whittling into the daggers I’ve come to know well.  
 _(Water can suffocate and crush and flood.)_  
No. She can’t be right.  
But what if she was?

“You’re a motherless little girl, Katara. You’ll always look for her and never find her. But you could be the progeny of so much more. You’re a daughter of the snow, so be cold. You’re a daughter of the ice, so be hard. You’re a daughter of blood, so be divine.” She cackled gleefully, sickeningly.   
“Give and take, puppet master.”

My daggers started pointing towards Hama. She grinned.

“Violence is in your nature. You can’t control it. But you can control others.”  
  
( _I don’t know, Katara, sometimes I think the spirits are too trusting._ )

My daggers file and sharpen themselves.

( _Congratulations. You’re a bloodbender now!_ )  
This was a familiar scene. I had been here before with the man who killed my mother and Zuko. _Zuko_ , I thought.   
I took a deep breath in and a deep breath out.   
_He doesn’t think you’re evil, and he would know. He lived with it._ I tell myself. There are no voices to contradict me.   
_(Bending isn’t evil. People can use it for evil.)  
_ I wouldn’t be one of them.   
  
I release the water and only glare daggers at her now.

“You were wrong about me before and you’re wrong now. Bloodbending doesn’t have to be evil. It can heal, you know. People stronger than you figured out the good side as well as the bad.”  
  
  
"Weak people! Backwoods nobodies who don’t hold a candle to the South."  
  
“No! Good people. Women who understand what flows in a person's bloodstream better than you.”  
  
She stood up straight from her defensive stance and an unreadable expression passed over her. I braced myself. Hama prized herself in inventing bloodbending- in passing on a legacy as twisted as she was. She spent years of her life dedicated to understand veins and body systems and manipulation.

I tore her self idealization now.  
She looked at me in a calculating death stare.

  
“You’re a disgrace to our people.”

  
“No. I saved our people. You’ll be used as a warning to what hatred can do. You lived and died in a cage of your own making, Hama, and _that_ is justice.”

She screamed a violent banshee sound at me. She couldn’t bend, so she ran full tilt towards me, hands outstretched like she was going for my throat.

  
I didn’t have time to pull my water back, but my body seemed to remember the defensive maneuvers drilled in me from the previous winter, and I ducked and rolled out of her way.  
I made a mental note to thank Suki.  
I whipped around with my water ready, but Hama, in her last fit of rage and hatred, was gone.  
  
  
I exhaled.  
( _Sometimes I think the spirits are too trusting_.)  
  
  
I sunk to the ground and laid on my back.

( _Bending isnt evil, bluebell_.)

I dig my fingers into the damp earth.  
  
I just listen. To the bullfrogs clearing their throats, to the vines clatters like wind chimes, to the winds blowing in from the West in overlapping whispers that sound like _Katara_. .  
  
  
I look to the tall grass on either side of my head and the tree branches twisting in impossible loops above me, and just beyond, to the sky, where the moon seems to chime in with the wind: _Katara_.  
  
I shut my eyes and tune out the wild.  
  
  
  
( _We have to trust in what the spirits will let us do_.)  
I reach out with my water into the ground.

  
I feel spiderworms digging around, twisting themselves to revel in plush dirt.  
I move my arms in the notion of a mock snow angel.  
I sense the bullfrogs that I hear. They were leaping from one bank to another.  
I dig a little deeper.  
Underneath the banks the catgators roll over and over and over. They float up and down and bump each other with lazy indifference.  
  
I relax my hands and feet.

  
There is water everywhere in this swamp. In the moisture that makes the mud, in the rivers that house the swamp monsters, in the air that’s thick and heavy, in the plants that sway in strangely human gestures.  
I breathe in and out.  
I feel the water of the flora, the blood of the fauna.  
They all move together like body parts.  
Arms and legs and eyes and ears.  
One giant living organism.  
And then it clicks.  
I place my palms down gently on the earth beneath me.  
  
It was never the winds carrying my name.  
It was the earth, and it’s heartbeat, pumping out the familiar rhythm of my name in steady thumps. _Katara, Katara, Katara._  
It was telling me I was part of this strange body system as well.  
I stand up then.  
With a deep breath, I turn towards the swampy river that sings out my name.  
 _Katara, Katara, Katara._

  
I make my decision in the same way I make most of my decisions lately: impulsively.

  
I take a running start, crashing through the brush with only moonlight to guide me, and throw myself into the river.

I let it wash over me.  
I bob for a moment before pumping my arms and legs as hard as I can until I reach the base of the cattails that were sticking up.  
  
I yank and scratch at them with all my might, using muscles I’ve gained from bending and sparring and fighting. They were stubborn, though. I could see why this tradition would be a bad idea.

And then I remembered.  
( _You’ll know when you need it._ )  
With one strong slice, I used Rue’s knife to cut the cattail free and push myself to the surface.  
  
  
I emerge, wild and feral and dirty, but entirely reborn.  
  
I stand on the banks, gripping the cattail tightly.  
I buried the puppetmaster in the wetland grave. I am no longer her, and she is no longer me.

The bullfrogs croak and the west winds chime and the earthen heartbeat sounds their fervent agreement.  
It was time for a new legacy.  
  
I am a daughter of snow: I am cold, but I am also soothing and forgiving.  
I am a daughter of ice: I am hard, but I am also sturdy and stabilizing.  
I am a daughter of blood: I am divine, but I am also human and will learn how to give back to the organism to which I belong.  
  
I cut a small piece of the cattail off and stick it in my belt beside the knife.

I leave the rest of it drifting in the foam of the marshes.

This Foggy Swamp baptism meant I was ready to move on.

I looked up from the floating cattails and nearly gasped when I noticed the hint of a figure across the bank. She was older, maybe Gran's age, and dressed in greens. She looked vaguely familiar, like I had dreamed her before. 

She blended in with the surroundings, mossy clothes and dark features. She would have been camouflaged were it not for the flowers she wore braided in her hair.

They were bright blue. I knew who she was immediately.  
So I smiled.

She gave a little nod at me, and I felt strangely proud. I nodded back. 

She simply walked away, saying nothing, but humming a little. 

What did Jet say? _Forests stranger than this one?_ I wondered if that were true.   
  
I walk away from the clearing, smelling like mud and dirt, but I don’t bend it away; I wear it like armor.

The solstice was almost over; I could tell by the lightening around the trees, alerting me to the rising sun and allowing me to actually see where I was going.  
  
I wasn’t sure what else could be lurking for me here. I was considering finding my way back to camp when a flash of red caught my eye.  
  
I turned to the right and caught a glimpse of a woman walking away from me. She had long black hair and walked with her head high, red robes made of what looked like expensive silk.  
I recognized the posture.  
  
Was that... _Azula_?

  
My heart stopped.

  
I walked after her, tripping over rocks and branches in my haste to catch up.  
She wasn’t walking fast, but it was purposeful.  
My mind was racing. Did something happen? I haven’t heard from anyone for months. Could something really happen to Azula? She was so powerful. A cage took Hama down. Could it take down Azula? I felt sick.  
I finally caught up to her at one of banks.  
She was already turned around waiting for me.

It was not Azula.

“Ursa?” I said out loud. I didn’t mean to, and in hindsight, I could’ve been more respectful, but I was taken aback.  
She looked at me funny, like she was scrutinizing me. Her face was kind, but she was more faded than Jet or Hama. It appeared the spirit world had not been kind to her. The longer we stood, her robes went from maroon to pink.  
  
“You know me.” She stated.  
I thought about how to respond to this accurately.  
  
“I know your children.”  
This made her frown.

  
“At least one of us can say that.”  
Her hair seemed to get streaks of grey as we stood.  
“Why am I here?” She asked.  
  
“I don’t know.” I answered honestly. Zuko’s mom was the last person I expected to see here.  
Then it hit me.  
She was dead.  
And I would have to tell him.  
My stomach sank.  
  
“This is a strange place. It’s not the kind of heat I’m used to. You can’t _breathe_ in this kind of heat.” She was flickering oddly. She didn’t seem to be able to maintain one particular color. It seemed to be hard for her to be here.  
  
“You don’t come from the heat.” She continued. She looked at me then. Her eyes were searching mine for something. It was like she was _looking_ for something.  
“You can’t breathe in the cold either” she said.

Even under my muck, the blue stood out.  
“Have you been to the poles?” I asked.  
  
“Different kind of cold.” She said.  
  
She didn’t elaborate.

“Why am I here?” She asked again.  
  
“I don’t know.” I felt a twitch of annoyance.  
  
“You’re far from your glaciers.” I gave her a strange look. She was flickering in and out of color rapidly.

  
“Did you dream of blue cherries in red snow?” she asked suddenly. I opened and shut my mouth a few times. _How could she know?_ Her flickering colors hurt to look at.  
She shook her head fervently until she was back in color, albeit muted. She looked at me again.  
  
“Why am I here?”

I frowned.  
“I really don’t know.”  
  
  
“You do.” She stated this like a fact. I looked at her again and she was staring at me intently. The same searching expression. _What was she looking for?_  
“You’re angry, aren’t you? Or sad maybe? I used to be able to tell the difference.”

My palms started to sweat. She flickered once, twice.  
“Why am I here?”  
She said it a little aggressively this time.  
  
“I..I don’t-“ I couldn’t even finish my answer before she cut me off.  
  
“You do. Tell me.”

I was irritated now.  
  
“I already told you. I don’t know.”  
  
“You’re lying. I can still discern that. That’s good to know. Why am I here?”  
  
I looked at her affronted. My irritation was now anger. She didn’t even know me, and she was calling me a liar.  
  
“I don’t kn-“  
  
“Why am I here?” She asked persistently.  
  
“What do you want from me?” I said instead. She was getting at something, but I didn’t know what.  
  
“The truth. Tell me.”  
  
“I already did.”  
  
“No. You lied.”  
  
“I’m not a liar.”  
  
“Why am I here?”  
  
“Because you left them! To him! To that place!” It came out before I could stop it. I felt a little surprised at myself. I didn’t know where I had been harboring the resentment, but I felt the truth in my words as I spoke them and held my ground.  
I stood as straight as I could.   
(I thought of Zuko again.)   
  
“Ah.” She said simply.  
“I had no choice. “  
My anger flared.  
  
“I know when a mother has no choice. You did.”  
That seemed to ignite something in her.  
  
“It wasn’t easy you know! I didn’t want to leave! But it could’ve been much worse!”  
I wasn’t sure I completely understood _how_ it could’ve been worse, thinking of Zuko getting scarred as a child and Azula sobbing in chains.

Maybe I didn’t want to know.  
  
“They needed you.”  
She gave me a funny look. Searching again.  
  
“Then why aren’t they here?”

I blanked.  
  
“Yes, blue girl, this is about you, isn’t it?”  
I started to contradict her, but she cut me off again.

  
“Did you need someone who wasn’t there for you?” She said it gently, but the hurt on my face at the truth was answered enough for her. She didn’t press me.

We lapsed into an uncomfortable silence, and then she asked,  
“What do you know about them? “  
  
I knew what she meant. I thought about what I knew. The two fire sibling's journeys were so different. Zuko went from a banished, angry prince to a prominent Fire Lord. He instilled peace treaties and helped end the war his own father started. These were important facts, but I knew the kind of facts a mother appreciated. Facts that were along the lines of pointing out the leaves were beginning to change, or the snow was beginning to pick up, or the flowers had started to bloom.  
  
“Zuko is kind and generous. Still shy but people listen to him. He loves your garden.” She smiled at this, which made her look every inch the Fire Lady that I imagined she was.  
“And Azula?” She asked.  
  
Azula went from being one of the most powerful benders I had ever met to a scared girl dry heaving Fire. I tried to answer kindly but honestly.  
  
“Azula is...hurting right now.”  
I couldn't read her expression. She was flickering again.   
  
“How?”

I shrugged and answered with the weight of my own loss.  
  
“Little girls need their mothers.”  
  
She made a choked sound. She composed herself quickly, but she was nearly all gray at this point. The fire crown she wore had the barest hint of gold in it. She was looking somewhere into the swamplands, years of some sort of ancient pain etched into her ashen face.  
  
“She was cold all the time,” she started, _remembering_ something, _seeing_ something, _being_ somewhere that wasn’t here and now.

_Miles away._

  
I listened.  
“She used to tell me it was too cold in the palace, too drafty for her. And she was little, always so little, she could never bundle up enough inside.  
The only thing that ever warmed her up was the sun. She would lay under it for hours at a time.  
She said letting the rays reach inside and light everything on fire made her feel like she was glowing inside out. This was around the time she learned firebending, you know. I think she was feeling...what do you they call it? Inner fire? I don’t remember now.  
I just remember she would get so tan as a child. Freckled and bronzed. Because of that, she always looked very healthy; however, I’m sure you know looks can be deceiving.”

I don’t know if it was purposeful or not, but she made her way closer and closer to me while she spoke until she stood right in front me, like we knew each other.

  
“Once she started training, or, rather, once her father finally took an interest, she was covered from head to toe in armor that looked too bulky for a little girl. She was so little, always so little, and she was told princesses are not supposed to be bronze. Only peasants brown in the sun.”  
She gave me an apologetic look.  
“So she spent most of her time inside in that armor. It was thick and heavy and it made her sweat, and she was colder than ever. Do you understand what I mean?”

  
She was looking at me or _in_ me or _through_ me again, with that searching expression. I think maybe she was looking for someone else, someone who could forgive her, but I nodded anyway.

  
 _Different kind of cold._  
  
“I don’t think she ever needed me.” She said quietly.  
I sighed.  
“She needed you more than you’ll ever know.”

  
She looked at me pained again but didn’t contradict what I said.  
  
I thought of Azula as a little girl, wanting to suntan because it felt good and having it taken away from her.

The _sun_ of all things.  
  
  
“Does she still wear her hair the same way?” she asked me.  
  
The last time I had seen Azula, she looked feral with her choppy hack-job.  
  
I wasn’t expecting the question, and I thought about how honest I should be.  
I didn’t see a point in lying, but she looked so sad and still watched me like she was seeing someone else.  
I wondered if ' _you see what you see_ ' works both ways.  
  
“Not anymore.” She straightened again, face impassible but forehead crinkled.

  
It was a Zuko look through and through.  
He must’ve learned it from her.  
  
“That’s a shame. I always thought it suited her.”  
  
Her hand came out suddenly, quick but sure, and held some of the looped hair that hung beneath my jaw between her thumb and forefinger. I stiffened but didn’t move.  
  
“You remind me of her.”

I inhaled sharply.  
  
“It’s something about your hair,” she let go of the strand and gestured with a swooping motion at my hair loops.  
  
“I think it’s the symmetry of it.”

I exhaled slowly.  
  
Her eyes looked even sadder up close. The darkest grey of the whole of her.  
I watched her walk back towards the vines she came from. Just before stepping out of sight, she turned back to me once and searched my face in vain for a flicker of recognition.  
I couldn’t be certain, but it made me think daughterless mothers tried to find what they were missing just as much as motherless daughters.  
She shut her eyes briefly as if she was very, very tired, and then she stepped through the brush.  
 _You remind me of her._  
I had been dreading it all this time, ever since the comet, but I wasn't afraid anymore.  
(I buried that already.)  
  
I sat down on one of the sprawling branches.  
  
I used to think of Azula as a destination. We were on two sides of a rickety bridge, and with every voice I heard, every person I hurt, every ice dagger I shot, I would get closer and closer to her with shaking steps. And it was terrifying because we were opposites, weren't we? Red and blue, fire and ice, good and bad, princess and peasant.  
But I was wrong.  
  
My fear was never about seeing Azula in myself. It was about seeing myself in Azula. Because then the lines blurred, didn’t they? How could you see yourself in a monster? Are you the monster or is the monster human?  
We weren’t standing on two sides of a crumbling bridge. We were both too _kinetic_ to just stand and stare at each other.  
(Charged with the same energy).  
It was more like we were trying to scale the side of a volcano or swim across an ocean. (Didn’t I struggle walking through fire? Didn’t she struggle treading water?)  
It was something vast and fathomless.  
It was bending blue fire and controlling red blood.  
It was shooting lightning that crackled like ice and ice that flashed like lightning.  
It was being raised to confuse evil for good and good for evil.  
It was being a princess and a chief and a pauper and a prisoner.  
It was hair loops and side bangs.  
It was big brothers and motherless children.  
It was loving Zuko but not being able to tell him.  
Above all, it was being hurt in a war that didn’t care whose side you fought for.

(S _ymmetry.)_  
  
  
Could I have turned into the violent and unstable girl Azula did? Yes, but I didn’t, and it wasn’t because I had more strength or wits or goodness. It was because I had people who filled me to the brim.

 _Do you see?_ They would ask me (in hugs and hand holding and red bedrooms and blue pillow forts) _do you see how good it can be?_  
  
Azula didn’t have that.  
Could she have turned out differently? I hope so, but nothing could be done about that now.  
(War crimes come in all shapes and sizes).  
  
That wasn’t the real question, and I was trying very hard to answer the _real_ questions.   
Was it too late for her?  
I’d never know unless I tried.  
I looked at the cattail again and wondered what part of herself Azula would leave behind.  
  
I adjusted my sitting position so I could lean back against the trunk of a huge root.  
I felt bone tired, but in the satisfying way, like after a good sparring match. I let my eyes rest for just a moment.

* * *

Despite our argument, I told Zuko's healers what herbs to give him to help his allergies, and he was back to meetings the very next day. 

That being said, he did everything in his power to ignore me. I couldn't blame him. I think he was shocked I stayed.   
I might’ve left, but I had negotiations to make as well.   
(I missed him, if I was being honest). 

The meetings ran impossibly long, and I felt myself shift around throughout their length.   
  
1 hour since Zuko chimed in with his opinion.

45 minutes since Zuko ruffled his hair.   
  


30 minutes since Zuko made his angry-but-hiding-it face at that noble.

I’m pathetic, I know.   
  


The week ended with festivities as always. I kept to the perimeter of the party. I was leaving the following day and Zuko was blatantly making it a point not to speak to me. Maybe he wanted me to make the first move? I _would_ except I didn’t trust what would slip out of me. 

I took to chatting with various nobles until I found a spot near the back of the room where I could sit and breathe and pretend like I wasn’t watching Zuko. 

Aang found me eventually and asked if I wanted to dance.

The music had slowed into something soothing, and I agreed, hoping to actually be able to catch up with him. He was nearly impossible to pin down these days. He had been a little distant since the war ended, focusing solely on his duties as the Avatar.

I understood, but I knew there was a little more going on with him than just his responsibility.  
He was changed-a little older, weightier, more serious. It made sense. He had someone's life in his hands and could've ended it. I knew how that felt. It was inevitable for kids to grow up too fast in a war, but there was something wrong about an airbender looking so heavy and _grounded_. He couldn't be light and airy all the time, but I mourn who I cracked out of the ice sometimes. 

Dancing with him like we were kids was one of those times. We talked and laughed like we used to, discussing the world in a way that was _optimistic_.  
I felt my neck tingle at some point. I ignored it. _Ha_. 

I felt _good_.

Up until he made an offhand comment about how he started spending more time in the spirit world. 

"How much time do you spend there?" I asked. We were still in the middle of the dance floor, swaying with the grace of two waterbenders.

"A few hours once or twice a week." I reared back at him.

"So much? Why? Is there something going on?" My mind started spinning. 

And then he got the _look_. The faraway, worlds away, lifetimes away look. 

"No, there's nothing going on." He left it at that, and I knew I should've left it, too, but I didn't.

"Aang, why do you spend so much time there?" 

I didn't think he was going to answer. He looked away from me for a long time. 

“Aang?” I prompted.   
  
He answered so quietly, I thought I had misheard him.   
I made him say it again.   
"Sometimes I talk to Koh."

My stomach dropped. I felt sucker-punched. We were still in the middle of the dance floor, but any attempt at dancing was halted. I pulled back from him completely.

"Why?" I didn't shout but my voice was raised. "Why in this world or the next would you ever want to talk to Koh? Aang, you're the Avatar! You can't risk your life like that!"

He pulled away from me, too. 

"Exactly, Katara! I'm the Avatar! I have to mediate between leaders and nations. Talking to Koh helps me keep them in check. I can't make emotional decisions as the Avatar. I did that throughout the war, and I got lucky to win!" 

The floor could have dropped out from under me and I wouldn’t have noticed.

"Aang, you don't mean that."

He looked through me. I narrowed my eyes. 

"You _don't_ mean that," I said more forcefully. "Is this really about being the Avatar, or is this some sick game of Kyoshi Roulette? Are you trying to get yourself killed?" I was yelling now. 

"I knew you wouldn't understand." He didn't yell, but his voice was too cool, too hard, too icy, and he threw my own words back at me from Yon Rha, adding salt to the gaping wound he had opened in me. He gave me a blank expression- _the one he must use with Koh_ my brain offered rather unhelpfully.  
It gave me chills. 

Before I could even answer, he was gone. He practically flew out of the room. 

I was alone on the dance floor and noticed a series of things at once.

Everyone was staring at me.

Everyone must have heard at least half of that.

I just yelled at the _Avatar_ at the end of the _war_ in front of everyone.

I had unconsciously pulled all the wine from everyone's glass, and it was currently flanking me, waiting to be commanded. 

I dropped it in a puddle and stormed out of the room, ignoring my brother and friends, searing me with questioning gazes. 

I ran all the way back to my guest suite.

I paced furiously. I was mad. Really, _really_ mad. So mad that I let loose crying. Angry tears.  
I had forgot to close my door, so when I looked up and saw Sokka at the entrance about to enter, pity and confusion written all over his face, I pulled all the water from the air, the room, even the tub and iced my door over. 

"Katara?" I didn't answer.

"Come on, baby sis, let me in." 

He knocked and called my name for several minutes but eventually gave up and left. 

Or so I thought. 

"Katara." it wasn't Sokka.   
  
_That traitor_. 

I didn't let up. 

"Katara, please. It's me."

I knew what he meant by that. 

_Tethered_ , after all.

This thought made me even angrier. I was ready to pick a fight, bouncing on my heels, eyes narrowed. Tears still flowing but I didn’t even notice them. 

I made an opening for him. 

He entered, took one look at me and stopped where he was.   
  


I iced the door closed.   
  


“You.” I said, voice shaking, eyes watering.   
  
His good eye was open as wide as it could go. He looked like he wanted to say something but thought better of it.   
  


“How _dare_ you accuse me of turning my back on you. I don’t do that. I never do that. I _know_ who my people are.”   
  


He had started to hold his hands up in a placating manner, but I wasn’t done.   
  


“I am pulled in so many directions at once, by so many different people, and you think I left without saying goodbye because you weren’t _important_ enough?” 

“Katar-“ he tried to speak, but I cut him off.   
  


“I slept by your bedside for days, nursed you back to health. Zuko, you saved my life! And you think you didn’t matter enough to me? You think I didn’t say goodbye because I didn’t care?”

He got a strange look on his face.   
  
  


“Everyone came back, and we all had things to do and other people to take into account, and there were things I couldn’t have known! Things changed, Zuko. Not just changed, but _changed_.” I emphasized.  
  


His strange expression morphed into something like understanding, which only enraged me further because I wanted to yell at him and remain as vague as possible. 

“I didn’t want to just leave you, you know!” _Oops_. The burst came out of me before I could stop it. The ice wall shattered as soon as I said it. I hadn’t meant to say it, but there it was. It stopped my rant short. I snapped my mouth shut. Zuko was looking between me and the shattered ice like he was trying to remain neutral but was a little freaked.   
I bent the ice back into various vases and basins mostly for something to do.   
  
  


“Then why did you?” He asked it quietly, his voice raspy and low and I melted a little. I couldn’t lie, but I couldn’t tell him the truth.   
  


I looked away from him.   
He sighed. It sounded sad.  
  


“Katara, why can’t you answer the question?”

 _Because some questions aren’t meant to be answered,_ my mind supplied almost automatically.   
  


“Does it matter at this point anyway?” I asked him instead.   
He looked a little torn. 

“I guess not.” He said, and I knew what he really meant. _It won’t un-change things now.  
  
_

We lapsed into silence for a moment.

“What happened with Aang?” He asked me suddenly.   
  


I pinched the bridge of my nose and gave him a look. _I don’t want to talk about it._ He gave a slight nod of understanding.   
  


He stood up a little straighter and walked over to me.   
  
“You’re leaving tomorrow?” I only nodded.

”I won’t be able to see you off in the morning.”

I gave a dark scoff. “So _this_ is goodbye.”   
  


His Fire Lord facade cracked a little. He reached out and wiped a stray tear away.   
  


“Will we ever figure this out?” He mumbled it so low I almost missed it.  
I didn’t know if I was supposed to answer or not. 

He gave me a pitiful smile, clasped both hands behind his back, and simply said, “goodbye, Katara.”   
  
I felt like the ice shrapnel. Collateral damage.   
  


“Goodbye, Zuko.”   
  


He left, back ramrod straight and steps obnoxiously even. 

I wiped at my face furiously, trying to erase how much his simple touch meant.

I looked in the mirror at my red-rimmed eyes.   
I glared at myself.

_No more crying._

* * *

I woke up with a start.

I had only fallen asleep for a few hours. The sun wasn’t too high yet, but the solstice was definitely over, and I needed to start heading back to camp.   
  


I panicked momentarily about not being able to find my way back in the daylight, but the brush was disturbed enough for me to tell the general direction I came from.   
  


That, and I decided to trust the Swamp.   
  
I started walking, thinking the thing that happened over and over in my mind. I felt different, that was for sure. Different? Was that the word? 

I felt gutted, I decided, having finally spilled all my insides out. It was raw but necessary.   
  
There were things that I needed to change. 

I will not make myself small anymore.  
I will be large and grow like the tiger sharks that swim in the arctic sea.  
I will not afraid anymore.  
I will walk from one point to the other without bending myself in painful angles.  
I will not blame my bending anymore.   
I am the mother and daughter and sister and friend and lover to the water and blood and sweat that binds my cells together.

The voices are no more. I banish them. 

_Bloodbender_ , I think. It's my own voice, and I will call myself this until it stops feeling so dirty. 

  
( _We have to trust in what the spirits will let us do_.)

I eventually find my way back to camp. I go to the healing hut and find Rue first. 

She looks terrible, to be honest, like she sat up all night. I smile when I see her, and it makes her laugh. 

"I saw your mother." I said. She gave me a watery smile. 

"I told her to keep an eye on you." My chest clenched. 

"She wears bluebells in her hair, doesn't she?"

Rue laughed again. "You remind me of her," she said. 

_Motherless daughters, daughterless mothers._ We'll never stop looking for each other. 

I gave the knife back, and she started to shake her head like she wanted me to keep it.

"You'll need it for the next person who wanders in here needing to learn something," I said.

She nodded at that but looked a little incredulous.

"Having said that," I continued, "I was wondering if you would teach me one more thing."

* * *

I wrote to Sokka and Suki that I was ready to go. 

The days after sending Hawky, I picked up on my old routine-diving into marshes and wrestling catgators and sunbathing with increasing frequency.

(I was thinking of a tan little girl.) 

Above all, I was learning how to heal like Rue. She was right about it being delicate work. It took a lot of concentration, and I had to get over my initial panic to even attempt it. Remaining calm was the key to staying in control. 

I took to it ferociously, dedicating most of my time to learning as much as I could before I had to go. I would heal most of the day and sit with my lightning turtles at night. 

And, if I was being honest, I would think about Zuko. I made a vow to myself to stop hiding and stop shrinking, and I knew it was time to set things right. 

The day finally came when Hawky returned with quite a stack of letters. I was in the healing hut when Rue came in, waving them around with a grin. She only looked a little sad. We took our lunch break early, and she made tea while I picked through the pile.

I had one from Aang, one from Toph (via Aang), two from Sokka and Suki, one from my dad, and one final one from the Fire Lord himself. I was torn between ripping into it and ripping it up, but that would contradict my whole dramatic thing about not being afraid anymore, so I compromised by sticking it in the back of the stack.  
Rue gave me a little side eye at that. 

(I ignored her.)

I started with the most recent one, which was from Suki. 

And boy, was I glad. 

_Katara,_

_I'm not sure when this will reach you. Sokka said not to disturb you while you were "doing your swamp thing," but to be honest, the only reason I'm not sending this off with another carrier Hawk is because I don't think it would find you in the Swamp._

_Your dad asked your brother to come to the North Pole urgently, and it's a long story, but they more or less got into a massive fight about the future of the two tribes._

_Katara...your brother denounced the chiefdom._

_We need you in the North as soon as possible. When we hear from you, Aang is going to come pick you up._

_My love,_

_Suki._

I might've blown over had I not been sitting down.

"Spirits!" I blurted out. Rue looked at me funny.

"What about them?" she asked.

I deadpanned.

"They're all comedians." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this is late, and I'm very sorry!! It's long, though, so yay?? I don't have much to say about this chapter. I'll let it speak for itself. Thanks for all the kudos :) Please let me know what you think!!!

**Author's Note:**

> I love the concept of writing a story across seasons, so I wanted to give it a whirl. This is for you Zutara shippers and Katara lovers.


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